store files/folders without target representation

[j-lakeman]

How can e.g. config files whose location is defined via environment variables just be stored in chezmoi without creating a target file/folder?

[halostatue]

If I’m understanding your question correctly, and I’m not sure that I am because there is no example of what you mean, the short answer is "you can't."

The long answer is "you can, but you get no benefit from chezmoi, including secrets management if you do this". If you use .chezmoihome to specify a different root directory in the work tree, you can store whatever you want in your chezmoi repo outside of that directory and chezmoi will not process any of those files.

[bradenhilton]

chezmoi automatically ignores files with names starting with a dot, so you can just store it as e.g. ~/.local/share/chezmoi/.ripgreprc

[halostatue]

I still don't really understand why you wouldn’t want this managed by chezmoi, just carried in the repo. I go ahead and generate my .ripgreprc ( https://github.com/halostatue/dotfiles/blob/main/home/private_dot_ripgreprc) even though you also have to set an environment variable for it to be valid.

[j-lakeman]

chezmoi automatically ignores files with names starting with a dot, so you can just store it as e.g. ~/.local/share/chezmoi/.ripgreprc

The same goes for folders I assume?

[bradenhilton]

@j-lakeman That is stated in the documentation you linked:

All directories in the source state whose name begins with . are ignored by default

[j-lakeman]

I still don't really understand why you wouldn’t want this managed by chezmoi, just carried in the repo. I go ahead and generate my .ripgreprc ( https://github.com/halostatue/dotfiles/blob/main/home/private_dot_ripgreprc) even though you also have to set an environment variable for it to be valid.

So that ~ doesn't get crowded with dotfiles especially those whose location has to be set by environment variables anyways like .ripgreprc, ignore files for backup programs, etc.
It's neater to be able to stash them away IMHO.

[j-lakeman]

@j-lakeman That is stated in the documentation you linked:

THX m8. I just got confused whether any special directory would be appropriate for my use case.