How to organise and deploy dotfiles using GNU stow.

Does anyone have experience using GNU Stow for managing dot files? I’m especially interested in using it to build a git repo to include my .vimrc file so I can sync it between hosts.

I know I’ve seen other methods, such as making your home directory a bare git repo, so you can check-in your config files without moving them. There is also the chezmoi golang project.

How do others sync .vimrc between hosts?

  • @nsp
    1•1 year ago

    Nice! I never knew cp could do that. No more struggling to remember in which order the ln parameters should be!

    • @igemnace
      2•1 year ago

      Worth noting that this is GNU-specific! For macOS for example, you’d have to install GNU userland (e.g. from homebrew) to get the flag. There’s still value in using other solutions (such as ln), portability-wise.

      As an aside: I mostly think of the ln param orders as exactly the same as cp and mv:

      cp FROM TO
mv FROM TO
ln [-s] FROM TO

      Maybe that could help!