Templating

DotR compiles files through the Tera template engine at deploy time, using the resolved variables for that package and profile.

# a config file with Tera templates
[user]
name = "{{ git.name }}"
email = "{{ git.email }}"

{% if HOME %}
[paths]
data = "{{ HOME }}/Data"
{% endif %}

• {{ variable }} — variable substitution
• {% if condition %}...{% endif %} — conditionals
• {# comment #} — comments, stripped from output

Any construct Tera supports (loops, filters, macros) works, since DotR hands the file straight to Tera’s renderer.

Detection is automatic

A file is treated as templated if it contains any of {{, }}, {%, %}, {#, or #} (including Tera’s whitespace-trimming variants like {%- and -%}) anywhere in its content — no extension, header, or config flag required. Regular and templated files can coexist in the same package or directory.

Destination paths are templated too

Not just file contents — the dest path (and any per-profile targets override) is also run through Tera before use, so a destination can depend on variables:

[packages.ssh_config]
src = "dotfiles/ssh_config"
dest = "{{ HOME }}/.ssh/config"

Templated files are never backed up

dotr update normally copies a deployed file’s changes back into the repository. For a templated file, that would overwrite the template source with rendered output — so update (and the underlying backup step) skips templated packages entirely, leaving the template as the single source of truth. You’ll see a message like:

Skipping backup for templated 'nvim_config'

If you need to change a templated file, edit the template in dotfiles/ directly and redeploy.