dotfiles VS GNU Stow

Compare dotfiles vs GNU Stow and see what are their differences.

dotfiles

My dotfiles and a shell script to manage them (by kevin-hanselman)

GNU Stow

GNU Stow - mirror of savannah git repository occasionally with more bleeding-edge branches (by aspiers)
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dotfiles GNU Stow
1 4
7 552
- -
3.2 9.2
6 months ago 25 days ago
Shell Perl
MIT License GNU General Public License v3.0 only
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
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dotfiles

Posts with mentions or reviews of dotfiles. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2020-12-26.
  • Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)
    17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Dec 2020
    I really like this method as opposed to using a bare Git repository. For one, it's conceptually simpler in my mind; you don't have to understand Git internals to get this working. Secondly, this lets you pick and choose which config files you want to "install" on a machine.

    I feel obligated to share my Bash script, dotfiles.sh[1], that accomplishes what Stow does, but with a few tweaks that I found particularly useful:

    dotfiles.sh targets the user's home directory by default (i.e. stow -t $HOME).

    dotfiles.sh never symlinks directories, only files (i.e. stow --no-folding). (This was the straw that broke the camel's back and made me roll my own script in the first place.)

    dotfiles.sh makes backups of local config files and can restore them if you remove your symlinked version.

    My script is quite old now, and I use it so seldomly I'm not convinced there aren't bugs. YMMV.

    [1]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dotfiles

GNU Stow

Posts with mentions or reviews of GNU Stow. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2022-02-12.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing dotfiles and GNU Stow you can also consider the following projects:

zinit - Flexible and fast Zsh plugin manager with clean fpath, reports, completion management, Turbo, annexes, services, packages.

chezmoi - Manage your dotfiles across multiple diverse machines, securely.

Home Manager using Nix - Manage a user environment using Nix [maintainer=@rycee]

yadm - Yet Another Dotfiles Manager

dotbot - A tool that bootstraps your dotfiles ⚡️

dot.me - me dot files

rcm - rc file (dotfile) management

vcsh - config manager based on Git

Ansible - Ansible is a radically simple IT automation platform that makes your applications and systems easier to deploy and maintain. Automate everything from code deployment to network configuration to cloud management, in a language that approaches plain English, using SSH, with no agents to install on remote systems. https://docs.ansible.com.

bashdot - Minimalist dotfile management framework.