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twpayne
chezmoi
Go2018–2025
twpayne / chezmoi

chezmoi

Manage your dotfiles across multiple diverse machines, securely.

Systems & InfrastructureSecurity & PrivacyCommand LineMobile & Desktop
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
21Distinct people
33Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
22.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Manage your dotfiles across multiple diverse machines, securely.

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 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 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 year33 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-11-23 11:42:28 UTC to 2025-10-22 18:46:27 UTC.

024682018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 3 submissions, 5 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2025

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
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC321
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC835
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505

What Hacker News says

33 sources
rufo·Oct 22, 2025
What's interesting is the change in the policy. Old policy: > If you use an LLM (Large Language Model, like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, or Llama) to make a contribution then you must say so in your contribution and you must carefully review your contribution for correctness before sharing it. If you share un-reviewed LLM-generated content then you will be immediately banned. ...and the new one: > If you use an LLM (Large Language Model, like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, or Llama) to make any kind of contribution then you will immediately be banned without recourse. Looking at twpayne's discussion about the LLM policy[1], it seems like he got fed up with people not following those instructions: > I stumbled across an LLM-generated podcast about chezmoi today. It was bland, impersonal, dull, and un-insightful, just
Read the rest
like every LLM-generated contribution so far. > I will update chezmoi's contribution guide for LLM-generated content to say simply "no LLM-generated content is allowed and if you submit anything that looks even slightly LLM-generated then you will be immediately be banned." [1]: https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi/discussions/4010#discussi...
In Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
tedmiston·Jan 3, 2024
> A warning, not an admonishment: Use Apple services in a novel or unsupported manner and you're asking for trouble. +1 I've always had sync issues with iCloud Drive when storing developer projects and related things there. It ends up stuck or confused or conflicted but tries to resolve the merge conflicts opaquely and it's hard to know there's a problem in real time vs until later when you find something broken. I keep all dev things out of iCloud after getting burned by this enough times over the years. To OP: Consider a repo dotfiles setup like using Chezmoi or similar. Transitioning to it was less friction than I expected and the only downside really is having to remember to commit changes across devices. https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi
In Ask HN: Did macOS Sonoma break your iCloud setup?
twp·Jan 31, 2023
For one of my projects [1] I got about ten in-person questions/discussions equivalent to "Why don't you use Rust?" at various conferences/meetups over three years. The enthusiasm of the person asking the question was evident. What was trickier to handle was their insistence that "X would be better if written in Rust" without really understanding what makes X successful. This was further compounded a bunch of copycat projects written in Rust with very limited functionality. Their project's marketing said that "it's written in Rust!" was their primary advantage. Fundamentally, users don't care, or even know, which language your software is written in. All they care about is whether your software solves their problem. To answer your direct question: I got multiple "you should use Rust!" comments. I smiled, said thank you I know that Rust is
Read the rest
the right choice for certain problems. I then asked "How would Rust help here?" and listened. When Rust is the right language for the problem, I'll re-write. Until then, I'll be polite and listen. [1] https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi
In Rewrite it in Rust
mustache_kimono·Aug 29, 2022
> That this is even suggested as an installation command means that they might as well strike "securely" from the tagline. For someone interested in security the foul odor that this line emits is enough to make me stop reading. I don't know. I always think this line smacks of paternalism. For instance, plenty of projects suggest for installation something like: git clone https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi/; cd chezmoi; make; sudo make install Of course, "curl | bash" is not always preferable. Re: security, "curl | bash" may be preferable here given the superuser privileges, or the privileges required by dpkg upon install of a stray deb package. But is the implication one reads the makefile and the source code before installing when one git clones a repo, but doesn't when the instructions say pipe to bash? I also think many are afra
Read the rest
id to admit FOSS packaging security is mostly smoke and mirrors. Sure, it's nice re: trusting a mirror. It's nice for keeping track of packages and dependencies. But its technical security story vs "curl | bash" would seem only marginally better/worse depending on the circumstances. Because trust is the great problem. "curl | bash" may have a smell, but it's mostly the smell of the sewer we live in. Another question one might/should ask is -- what is the cross platform alternative? If it's "Build 10 packages for everyone," I'm not sure how happy that will make anyone. Just specifically re: this tool, imagine wanting to use it everywhere, however, you have a Mac dev laptop and your servers are a mix of Linux/FreeBSD. How much easier is it just to say "I trust chezmoi (because I would have had to trust it anyway) and 'curl | bash' is secure enough?"
In Chezmoi – Manage your dotfiles across multiple diverse machines, securely

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