Services

A service is a background process managed by the operating system. It might be a database, a sync daemon, a VPN client, Docker, or another program that should keep running without being started by hand.

On Linux, dots supports systemd and OpenRC services. On macOS, it supports services managed by Homebrew.

if dots.platform.family == "arch" then
  dots.systemd.enable({ "docker.service" })
  dots.systemd.start({ "docker.service" })
end

if dots.platform.family == "darwin" then
  dots.brew.enable()
  dots.brew.install({ "postgresql@16" })
  dots.brew.service.start({ "postgresql@16" })
end

enable and start are different operations:

• enable: start the service automatically on boot
• start: start the service now

Use both when the service should run now and after reboot. Use only start when the service should be active for the current profile but not necessarily enabled at boot.

systemd

Use dots.systemd for Linux system services:

dots.systemd.enable({ "docker.service" })
dots.systemd.start({ "docker.service" })

If those declarations are removed later, dots check shows the inverse action:

• enable becomes disable
• start becomes stop

OpenRC

Use dots.openrc on distros that boot with OpenRC, such as Alpine:

dots.openrc.enable({ "docker" })
dots.openrc.start({ "docker" })

enable adds the service to the default runlevel with rc-update add. Removing declarations shows the inverse action, the same as systemd.

Homebrew services

Use dots.brew.service for services managed by Homebrew:

dots.brew.enable()
dots.brew.install({ "postgresql@16" })
dots.brew.service.start({ "postgresql@16" })

If the declaration is removed later, dots runs brew services stop for that service.

Profiles

Profiles can decide which services are active on the same machine. For example, a work profile might start a VPN service while a personal profile leaves it stopped:

if dots.profile == "work" then
  dots.systemd.start({ "example-vpn.service" })
end

Switch profiles with:

dots --profile work apply
dots --profile personal apply

dots only stops services it already manages. If a service was started manually outside dots, it is left alone until it is declared and applied once.