dotfiles VS dotfiles

You don't need symlinks, setup scripts, etc. Try this:

1. Bare git repo in your home directory ($HOME/.files)

2. Alias for prefixing git commands ("env GIT_WORK_TREE=$HOME GIT_DIR=$HOME/.files")

3. Strict .gitignore file (that ignores all files by default)

Simple to add files: `h git add .vimrc`

Have this set up for myself. Works great https://github.com/tmm/dotfiles

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