.chezmoiroot and location of other .chezmoi* files

[2-4601]

I was planning to start using .chezmoiroot and move everything to a separate home/ directory.

The docs instruct to "move the relevant files in to the new root subdirectory manually." So I created .chezmoiroot and moved all the files and directories (except .chezmoi*) to home/.

Then I ran chezmoi apply and got an error about a missing template. So I moved .chezmoitemplates/ to home/ and run chezmoi apply again. The missing template error was fixed but I run into other issues. After several trials and errors it turned out that only .chezmoiroot and .chezmoiversion can live outside the home/.

So this is what seems to be working:

.
├── .chezmoiroot
├── .chezmoiversion
└── home/
    ├── .chezmoiexternal.toml
    ├── .chezmoiignore
    ├── .chezmoiscripts/
    ├── .chezmoitemplates/
    ├── .chezmoi.toml.tmpl
    ├── ...
    ...

This is the layout I was aiming for:

.
├── .chezmoiexternal.toml
├── .chezmoiignore
├── .chezmoiroot
├── .chezmoiscripts/
├── .chezmoitemplates/
├── .chezmoiversion
├── .chezmoi.toml.tmpl
└── home/
    ├── ...
    ...

Is it possible to make this layout work?

[halostatue]

You could probably only do so with symlinks due to the way that .chezmoiroot works. Basically, when running, chezmoi looks at .chezmoiversion first so that it can error out if there is a version mismatch. It then looks at .chezmoiroot and then changes its "base" directory from .chezmoi.workingTree to the directory specified in .chezmoiroot. During most operations, chezmoi would then no longer "see" anything in .chezmoi.workingTree. In effect, it performs cd (cat .chezmoiroot).