2y ago

Managing dotfiles with 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?

3 comments

I've been using Chezmoi for 2 weeks and it's fine so far. I guess most of those tools have the same features and IMHO it's a waste of time to compare every little detail. Use one for a month (stow in your case) and see if it's good for you.
I agree with @glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.org, all of these are just different ways to skin the cat. Whatever gets the files in the proper directories. Once you pick one (even arbitrarily, to a degree), you'll very likely find no reason to push you toward another solution. I myself use symlinks with GNU cp -s
- I've never heard of cp -faTs before. I did some experimenting and was surprised that it was recursive. I thought you needed an -R for that, but you don't. So, cp -faRTs appears to do the same thing, but is funnier.
  In any case, thanks for sharing your repo. I take it, that after the initial install, you can just repeatedly git pull https://git.sr.ht/~igemnace/vim-config and then run vim-config/scripts/install-cfg to keep your config files up-to-date.