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thoughtbot
rcm
Perl2013–2026
thoughtbot / rcm

rcm

rc file (dotfile) management

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
21Distinct people
22Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

rc file (dotfile) management

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year22 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-12-13 03:00:14 UTC to 2026-06-18 20:18:09 UTC.

012342013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

2 sources
jez·May 26, 2022
I use a tool called rcm[0], which is essentially a set of shell scripts for managing symlinks from $HOME into $HOME/.dotfiles. $HOME/.dotfiles can then be a git repo. Some notes: 1. rcm lets you decide make host-specific or host-agnostic dotfiles. For example, I can declare that I want a different `.ssh/config` file for each host, and rcm will figure out which `.ssh/config` to symlink based on the current machine's hostname. 2. The installation process is very simple. It's just shell scripts, so you don't have to worry about a C/C++ compiler or having any pre-reqs installed. Operating system packages exist for the common platforms, and there's also a convenient way to "build" from source using configure && make && make install. The from source option is particularly convenient if you need to change the installation prefix to a user-writab
Read the rest
le location on a multi-user machine. 3. I use SSH Agent Forwarding[1] to avoid needing to install private keys (either new keys or copies of existing keys) on all the hosts I manage. This lets me git push and pull to my dotfiles repo on all hosts. 4. Taking it a step further, some shell config I have is host-specific (e.g., certain PATH modifications I only want to apply on certain hosts). Rather than use the host-specific dotfile feature of rcm for the whole .bashrc, I factor my shell config files into multiple files, that I then source. One of these files is called `$HOME/.util/host.sh`, which is host specific. Again, rcm creates a symlink from this to the correct host-specific file automatically by hostname. If you're curious to learn more about any of this, my dotfiles are public.[2] [0] https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm [1] https://docs.github.com/en/developers/overview/using-ssh-age... [2] https://github.com/jez/dotfiles
In Ask HN: How do you sync your computer’s development configurations/environment?

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