# 2 Introduction #
-vcsh allows you to maintain several git repositories in one single directory.
-They all maintain their working trees without clobbering each other or
-interfering otherwise.
-By default, all git repositories maintained via vcsh are stored in $HOME but
-you can override this setting if you want to.
+[vcsh][vcsh] allows you to maintain several git repositories in one single
+directory. They all maintain their working trees without clobbering each other
+or interfering otherwise. By default, all git repositories maintained via
+`vcsh` are stored in <$HOME> but you can override this setting if you want to.
All that means that you can have one repository per application or application
-family, i.e. zsh, vim, ssh, mr, etc.
-This, in turn, allows you to clone different sets of configurations onto
-different machines or even for different users; picking and mixing which
-configurations you want to use on which machine.
-For example, you may not need to have your mplayer configuration on a server or
-for root and you may want to maintain different configuration for ssh on your
-personal and your work machines.
-
-vcsh was designed with [mr][mr] in mind so you might want to install that, as
+family, i.e. `zsh`, `vim`, `ssh`, etc. This, in turn, allows you to clone
+custom sets of configurations onto different machines or even for different
+users; picking and mixing which configurations you want to use where.
+For example, you may not need to have your `mplayer` configuration on a server
+or available to root and you may want to maintain different configuration for
+`ssh` on your personal and your work machines.
+
+`vcsh` was designed with [mr][mr] in mind so you might want to install that, as
well.
-Read INSTALL.md and PACKAGING for instructions specific to your operating
+Read <INSTALL.md> and <PACKAGING.md> for instructions specific to your operating
system.
The following overview will try to give you an idea of the use cases and
-advantages of vcsh. See sections 3 and 4 for detailed instructions and
+advantages of `vcsh`. See sections 3 and 4 for detailed instructions and
examples.
## 2.1 Talks ##
-Some people found it useful to look at slides and videos explaining how vcsh
+Some people found it useful to look at slides and videos explaining how `vcsh`
works.
They can all be found [on the author's talk page][talks].
## 3.1 Comparison to Other Solutions ##
Most people who decide to put their dotfiles under version control start with a
-**single repository in $HOME**, adding all their dotfiles (and possibly more)
+single repository in <$HOME>, adding all their dotfiles (and possibly more)
to it. This works, of course, but can become a nuisance as soon as you try to
manage more than one host.
The next logical step is to create single-purpose repositories in, for example,
-~/.dotfiles and to create **symbolic links in $HOME**. This gives you the
+<~/.dotfiles> and to create symbolic links into <$HOME>. This gives you the
flexibility to check out only certain repositories on different hosts. The
downsides of this approach are the necessary manual steps of cloning and
-symlinking the individual repositories. It will probably become a nuisance when
-you try to manage more than two hosts.
+symlinking the individual repositories.
-**vcsh** takes this second approach one step further. It expects
-**single-purpose repositories** and stores them in a hidden directory (similar
-to ~/.dotfiles). However, it does not create symbolic links in $HOME; it puts
-the **actual files right into $HOME**.
+`vcsh` takes this second approach one step further. It expects
+single-purpose repositories and stores them in a hidden directory (similar
+to <~/.dotfiles>). However, it does not create symbolic links in <$HOME>; it
+puts the actual files right into <$HOME>.
-Furthermore, by making use of [mr] [1], it makes it very easy to enable/disable
-and clone a large number of repositories. The use of mr is technically optional
-(see 4.3), but it will be an integral part of the proposed system that follows.
+Furthermore, by making use of [mr][mr], it makes it very easy to enable/disable
+and clone a large number of repositories. The use of `mr` is technically
+optional (see section 4.3), but it will be an integral part of the proposed
+system that follows.
## 3.2 Default Directory Layout ##
projects / code / vcsh.git / blobdiff