Powar

Powar is a dot-file configuration manager.

Each dot-file setup consists of a TypeScript project that uses the powar Deno library to define a set of modules, each corresponding to a configuration for some program or group of programs. For example, a Powar project might contain modules tmux, nvim, vscode and shell_scripts.

Each of these will install relevant configuration files for each program into their appropriate places. Furthermore, each module has the full power of TypeScript along with an API provided by Powar to perform common tasks such as installing files or running commands.

Getting started

Requirements: a UNIX system, recent versions of NodeJS and Yarn.

The first step is to install powar_init globally with Deno:

$ deno install --allow-read --allow-run https://deno.land/x/powar@1.0.1/powar_init.ts

Then, create a new Powar project (where powar_init should be replaced by the full installation path printed by the command above, if Deno is not in your PATH):

$ cd ~
$ powar_init --path ./dot_files

This will create a folder dot_files containing a Deno project. Run the template Powar project by:

$ cd dot_files
$ deno run main.ts

You should see the following output:

All module dependencies met.
Running hello_world...
  Hello, world!
Done.

This means that the module hello_world was run, which logged the message “Hello, world!”.

To add your configurations, start by mirroring the hello_world module in modules/hello_world/mod.ts to a program of your choice, for example modules/nvim/mod.ts. An example configuration for nvim might be:

import { powar } from "../../deps.ts";

export default powar.module(() => ({
  name: "nvim",
  dependsOn: [],
  path: powar.dir(import.meta),
  async action(p) {
    await p.install({"init.vim", "$HOME/.config/nvim/init.vim"});
    p.info("Neovim configuration installed.");
  },
}));

Then, update the global.ts file to register your new module:

import { powar } from "./deps.ts";
import nvim from "./modules/nvim/mod.ts";

powar.runCli(() => ({
  rootPath: powar.dir(import.meta),
  modules: [
    nvim({}),
  ],
}));

Then, running deno run main.ts should produce:

All module dependencies met.
Running nvim ..
  Neovim configuration installed.
Done.

API and command-line arguments

To see all the available command-line arguments for powar_init, run powar_init -h.

All available API functions provided by powar are documented in here.