# 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 in $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.
-**vcsh** takes this second approach one step further. It expects
-**single-purpose repositories** and stores them in a hidden directory (similar
+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**.
+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
projects / code / vcsh.git / blobdiff