GNU Stow
dotfiles
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| GNU Stow | dotfiles | |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 1 | |
| 548 | 7 | |
| - | - | |
| 9.2 | 3.2 | |
| 21 days ago | 6 months ago | |
| Perl | Shell | |
| GNU General Public License v3.0 only | MIT License |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
GNU Stow
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GNU Stow is a very useful Perl program but it has some minor issues that need to be fixed
I use GNU Stow to symlink many shell and configuration files from a repository. It works so well and there are many webpages out there from people telling you how it's the best way to manage dotfiles.
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Is it a good idea to backup my filesystem on github?
Gnu Stow
- Give Your Dotfiles a Home with GNU Stow
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Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)
Too bad that's broken for directory names: https://github.com/aspiers/stow/issues/33
dotfiles
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Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)
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
What are some alternatives?
chezmoi - Manage your dotfiles across multiple diverse machines, securely.
zinit - Flexible and fast Zsh plugin manager with clean fpath, reports, completion management, Turbo, annexes, services, packages.
yadm - Yet Another Dotfiles Manager
Home Manager using Nix - Manage a user environment using Nix [maintainer=@rycee]
dotbot - A tool that bootstraps your dotfiles ⚡️
rcm - rc file (dotfile) management
dot.me - me dot files
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.
vcsh - config manager based on Git
bashdot - Minimalist dotfile management framework.