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Managing Dotfiles

If you spend any meaningful time customizing your Bash or Zsh environment then it's worth backing up your hard work. This page is a collection of resources for managing your dotfiles (.bashrc, .zshrc, .vimrc, etc.).

Stow {#stow}

GNU Stow is a useful tool for managing your dotfiles. It allows you to organize all of your dotfiles into logical groupings or "packages", combine those packages into a version controlled directory, and then symlink each of the dotfiles to the correct locations on your system. There are historical reasons why this has been a problem. However, it also provides modern convenience and value when it comes to managing your personal dotfiles.

On gLinux you can install stow with apt.

$ sudo apt install stow
$ brew install stow

To take advantage of stow defaults, it is typical to store your dotfiles directory in your home directory (where the dotfiles will be symlinked to.) If you version control your dotfiles with Git, you can clone them directly into your home directory.

$ git clone sso://user/$USER/dotfiles $HOME/dotfiles && cd ~/dotfiles

If for example, your dotfiles tree looks like this:

~
└── dotfiles
    ├── vim
    |   └── .vim
    |       └── vimrc
    └── zsh
        └── .zshrc

Then you can invoke stow from your dotfiles directory to link all of your dotfiles to their appropriate tree locations in your home directory with one invocation:

$ cd ~/dotfiles && stow vim zsh

Which will establish the following symlinks.

  • ~/dotfiles/vim/.vim/vimrc —> ~/.vim/vimrc
  • ~/dotfiles/zsh/.zshrc —> ~/.zshrc

Neat! You can also "unstow" files as well to unlink. See the docs.

Assuming you have the following directory structure:

experimental/users/{{USERNAME}}
└── dotfiles
    ├── vim
    |   └── .vim
    |       └── vimrc
    └── zsh
        └── .zshrc

Then run:

stow -t $HOME -d /$repo/dotfiles vim zsh

If you get a existing target is not owned by stow error, make sure any existing files in $HOME are removed before you run stow. stow is conservative and doesn't override preexisting files.

Resources