Create a custom profiles repository

You can create a set of custom profiles for Splinter and upload them to GitHub on a private or public repository.

You can use these profiles to:

• share a standardise set of settings for your Macs across your organisation

or if you are a home user to:

• keep different profiles for different Macs: your own, your partner, your kids
• to reuse in time your favourite sets of configurations
  • when your a configuring a new Mac
  • when you want to restore your current Mac

Custom Profiles Repository content

A custom profiles repository can contains some or all of the below content

• a base profile that can be your unique profile or the common foundation for your role profiles
• one or more role profiles that represent a person, a person role or a computer role
• supporting files :

  • FileVault2 encryption certificates (the public cert)

  • an export of your personal prefereces (created via ./splinter export preferences)

  • the lists of your desidered packages and apps

  • the pictures for your desktop and profiles

    # example of a private `splinter-profiles` repository
    
    ├── files
    │   ├── certificates
    │   │   └── FileVaultMaster.der.cer
    │   │
    │   ├── preferences (backup of your dotfiles and preferences)
    │   │   ├── Accounts
    │   │   ├── StartupItems
    │   │   ├── app_store_preferences
    │   │   ├── dotfiles
    │   │   ├── preferences
    │   │   ├── shared_file_lists
    │   │   ├── ssh
    │   │   └── system_preferences
    │   │
    │   ├── lists
    │   │   ├── homebrew_cask_apps.txt
    │   │   ├── homebrew_packages.txt
    │   │   ├── homebrew_taps.txt
    │   │   ├── mas_apps.txt
    │   │   └── npm_global_packages.json
    │   │
    │   ├── desktop_pictures
    │   │   └── my-wallpaper.jpg
    │   │
    │   └── profile_pictures
    │       └── company-logo.png
    │
    ├── base (base profile to use across all your provisionings)
    │   ├── current_user.yml
    │   ├── dotfiles.yml
    │   ├── extra_packages.yml
    │   ├── filevault.yml
    │   ├── homebrew.yml
    │   ├── mac_app_store.yml
    │   ├── macos_apps.yml
    │   ├── modules.yml
    │   ├── new_user.yml
    │   ├── post_provision.yml
    │   ├── sophos_endpoint.yml
    │   ├── ssh_config.yml
    │   └── system_preferences.yml
    │
    └── developer (role profile to be used for specific provisionings)
        ├── dotfiles.yml
        ├── extra_packages.yml
        ├── filevault.yml
        ├── general.yml
        ├── homebrew.yml
        ├── modules.yml
        ├── new_user.yml
        ├── non_mas_apps.yml
        ├── ssh_config.yml
        └── system_preferences.yml
    

Custom profiles and repository naming

A custom profile can be named anything.

Also a custom profiles repository can be named anything you like. But you will make thing easier if you name your repository splinter-profiles.

Splinter will by default will look for a repository named splinter-profiles

Let's assume that:

• you have named your repository splinter-profiles in your
• your GitHub account name my-account
• you have created a base profile called my-base-profile
• you have created a role profile called my-work-profile
• you have uploaded a few supporting files in files

your repository will look like this:

https://github.com/my-account/splinter-profiles
    ├── files
    │   ├── lists
    │   │   └── ...
    │   └── profile_pictures
    │       └── ...
    ├── my-base-profile
    │   └── ...
    └── my-work-profile
        └── ...

If you want to name your custom profiles repository with a custom name when you are about to download it you will have to specify the Github repository name in the splinter.cfg file or in the command line -g <git-repo-name>

  # example
  # repo name: `https://github.com/my-account/custom-profiles-repo`

  ./splinter provision -a my-account -g custom-profiles-repo -r my-work-profile

Using custom profiles

When you want to use your profiles on a new provisioning you have two options:

• Download you custom-profile when building a provisioning package
• Fetch the custom profile on-the-fly during the provisioning

When a profile has been downloaded by Splinter it will be stored in the Splinter project's profiles directory:

• the supporting files will be merged with the content of ./profiles/files in your project dir
• the profiles will be saved in ./splinter/profiles and named as <account-name>.<profile-name>

according to our example your profiles will look like this:

./profiles/
  ├── my-account.my-base-profile
  │   └── ...
  └── my-account.my-work-profile
      └── ...s

this facilitate the use of profiles coming from difference GitHub accounts and avoid name conflicts

Download you custom-profile

You can download:

• the full set of your profiles from a GitHub repository: will also download all the supporting files

  ./splinter update profiles

• only one specific profile: will not download the supporting files

  # explicit form
  ./splinter update profiles -a my-account -r my-work-profile
  
  # compact form
  ./splinter update profiles -r my-account.my-work-profile
  

Fetch the custom profile on-the-fly

Custom profile can be downloaded on-the-fly when provisioning.

You can specify at the same what base ( -b ) and what role ( -r ) profiles you whant to use

  # explicit form
  ./splinter provision -a my-account -b my-base-profile -r my-work-profile

  # compact form
  ./splinter provision -b my-account.my-base-profile -r my-account.my-work-profile