Prequisites

• Install tuckr

Installation

Caution

Warning: Backup your local dotfiles before installing new ones.

For example, to install the waybar dotfiles into local system:

tuckr add waybar

To check status of installed dotfiles:

tuckr status

Git (git group)

.gitconfig includes ~/.config/delta/themes.gitconfig and selects the arctic-fox theme from it, so the delta group has to be installed alongside it or delta starts with an unknown theme:

tuckr add git delta

Environment variables (dotenv group)

Configs/dotenv holds the single source of truth for user environment variables and PATH: ~/.config/environment.d/dotenv.conf. Three consumers read that one file — systemd's native environment.d reader, dotenv-export.service (pushes the $HOME-expanded values into the systemd user manager so GUI apps see them), and dotenv-apply (emits export/set -gx for bash and fish). All three read every *.conf in the directory, in lexical order with later files winning.

Values are data, not shell. Both parsers strip one layer of matching surrounding quotes and substitute $HOME / ${HOME}; nothing else is interpreted. Write a value exactly as the receiving program should see it and do not shell-escape it — environment.d is a shared drop-in directory, so a value that got evaled would run whatever any file there contained on every interactive shell.

Because the service has to be enabled, this group needs set rather than add so its posthook runs:

tuckr set dotenv bash fish

Then log out and back in, so the graphical session inherits the environment.

Hosts without systemd (WSL2)

dotenv-apply needs nothing from systemd, so the system works unchanged on a WSL2 distro whose PID 1 is WSL's own init and where systemctl isn't installed. The posthook detects this and skips enabling the service; dotenv-export.service is then an inert file, and the two shell rc files are the only consumers. There is no user manager or graphical session to push the environment into separately, so nothing is lost.

Host-specific values live in a drop-in rather than a forked dotenv.conf. Any *.conf in ~/.config/environment.d/ is read in lexical order with later files winning — the same rule systemd's environment.d uses — so zz-wsl.conf sorts after dotenv.conf and overrides it:

tuckr set dotenv bash fish
tuckr add dotenv-wsl          # WSL machine only

Read Configs/dotenv-wsl/.config/environment.d/zz-wsl.conf before using it. It needs appendWindowsPath = false in /etc/wsl.conf, because dotenv.conf exports a full literal PATH that would otherwise wipe WSL's injected Windows entries and break clip.exe / explorer.exe.

Machine-specific things to review on a new host after installing:

• PATH in dotenv.conf is a full literal list (no $PATH self-reference, since the systemd reader cannot expand it). Entries that don't exist on the new machine are harmless, but hardware-specific ones like /opt/rocm/bin are only useful where that hardware is.

Verify after install:

systemctl --user show-environment | grep HERMES_HOME   # service reached the manager
sh ~/.local/bin/test_dotenv_apply.sh                   # dotenv-apply cache self-check