Schedule automatic updates¶

Run update.sh automatically every day with a launchd job, installed by scripts/setup-scheduler.sh.

Install the daily job¶

bash ~/dotfiles/scripts/setup-scheduler.sh

This renders system/LaunchAgents/com.dotfiles.update.plist into ~/Library/LaunchAgents/, loads it with launchctl, and schedules update.sh to run daily at 9 AM. It's idempotent — re-running reloads the job cleanly.

After install it reports the log, status file, plist path, and the uninstall command.

Skip upgrades or pulls on the schedule¶

Pass flags to bake them into the scheduled invocation (e.g. the job runs update.sh --no-upgrade):

bash ~/dotfiles/scripts/setup-scheduler.sh --no-upgrade   # pull + re-symlink + verify only
bash ~/dotfiles/scripts/setup-scheduler.sh --no-pull      # skip the git pull

--no-upgrade is recommended on work machines with version-sensitive tooling.

Note

These flags affect only the scheduled run. For a machine-wide default that also applies to manual update.sh runs, set NO_UPGRADE=true (or NO_PULL=true) in ~/.config/dotfiles/update.conf instead — update.sh reads that file directly, so the launchd job (which never sources ~/.zshrc) honors it too.

Set up `update.conf`¶

mkdir -p ~/.config/dotfiles
cp ~/dotfiles/home/examples/update.conf.example ~/.config/dotfiles/update.conf
# then edit: NO_UPGRADE=true / NO_PULL=true as desired

Precedence is config file < environment < command-line flags.

Change the schedule¶

Edit the StartCalendarInterval in system/LaunchAgents/com.dotfiles.update.plist, then re-run setup-scheduler.sh to reload the job with the new time.

Where to find logs and status¶

~/dotfiles/logs/update.log — scheduled run output (auto-rotated past ~1 MiB, keeps 5 copies via DOTFILES_LOG_KEEP).
~/dotfiles/logs/update.status — last-run timestamp, success/failure, failed steps, and duration.

Check the last result quickly with the dotstatus alias. On failure, update.sh also posts a macOS notification (skipped in CI/headless).

Uninstall¶

bash ~/dotfiles/scripts/setup-scheduler.sh --uninstall

This boots out the launchd job and removes the installed plist.