dotbot-windows

Configure Windows using dotbot.

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Table of contents

• What you can do with it
• Installation
• Configuration
• Development

What you can do with it

The dotbot-windows plugin is able to configure Windows in the following ways:

• Configure the desktop background color
• Import registry files (*.reg) from a specified directory
• Install fonts (TrueType and OpenType formats) from a specified directory

Sample configuration:

windows:
  personalization:
    background-color: "#2A4661"

  registry:
    import: "my-registry-tweaks/"

  fonts:
    path: "my-standard-fonts/"

Installation

There are two ways to install and use the plugin:

1. Install it as a Python package.
2. Add it as a git submodule in your dotfiles repository.
3. Copy dotbot_windows.py into your dotfiles directory.

Python package

If you want to install dotbot-windows as a Python package (for example, if you're using a virtual environment), then you can install the plugin using pip:

pip install dotbot-windows

Then, when running dotbot, use the -p or --plugin option to tell dotbot to load the plugin:

dotbot [...] --plugin dotbot_windows [...]

If you're using one of dotbot's install scripts, you'll need to edit that file to add the --plugin option.

Git submodule

If you want to track dotbot-windows as a git submodule (for example, if you manage your dotfiles using git) then you can add the plugin repository as a submodule using git:

git submodule add https://github.com/kurtmckee/dotbot-windows.git

This will clone the repository to a directory named dotbot-windows. Then, when running dotbot, use the -p or --plugin option to tell dotbot to load the plugin:

dotbot [...] --plugin dotbot-windows/dotbot_windows.py [...]

Note that you may need to initialize the plugin's git submodule when you clone your dotfiles repository or pull new changes to another computer. The command for this will look something like:

git submodule update --init dotbot-windows

Copy dotbot_windows.py

If desired, you can copy dotbot_windows.py to your dotfiles directory. You might choose to do this if you already use other plugins and have configured dotbot to load all plugins from a plugin directory.

If you copy dotbot_windows.py to the root of your dotfiles directory then, when running dotbot, use the -p or --plugin option to tell dotbot to load the plugin:

dotbot [...] --plugin dotbot_windows.py [...]

If you copy dotbot_windows.py to a directory containing other plugins, you can use dotbot's --plugin-dir option to load all plugins in the directory. In the example below, the plugin directory is named dotbot-plugins:

dotbot [...] --plugin-dir dotbot-plugins [...]

Configuration

Personalization

You can configure the desktop background color using a hexadecimal color (like "#2A4661") or a triplet of decimal RGB values (like "0 153 255").

Here are examples demonstrating the two formats:

windows:
    personalization:
        background-color: "#2A4661"

windows:
    personalization:
        background-color: "42 70 97"

Registry

You can import registry files by specifying a directory containing *.reg files. The directory will be recursively searched for *.reg files, and each of them will be imported.

Note that registry imports may fail if the changes require administrator privileges.

Here's a dotbot configuration file example:

windows:
    registry:
        import: "registry-export-files"

Fonts

Starting with Windows 10 build 17704, users can install fonts without admin permissions. The fonts can be copied into "%LOCALAPPDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/Fonts" and installed via the Windows registry.

Here's a dotbot configuration file example:

windows:
  fonts:
    path: "my-standard-fonts/"

Development

To set up a development environment, clone the dotbot-windows plugin's git repository. Then, follow these steps to create a virtual environment and run the test suite:

# Create the virtual environment
$ python -m venv .venv

# Activate the virtual environment (Windows-only)
$ & .venv/Scripts/Activate.ps1

# Update pip and setuptools, and install wheel
(.venv) $ pip install -U pip setuptools wheel

# Install poetry, tox, and scriv
(.venv) $ pip install poetry tox scriv

# Install all dependencies
(.venv) $ poetry install

# Run the unit tests locally
(.venv) $ tox