rdnlsmith / dotfiles

Obligatory dotfiles repository.

dotfiles

Obligatory dotfiles repository. This uses stow to maintain symlinks from files in the repo to the appropriate locations in the filesystem, similar to this blog post by Alex Pearce.

I haven't previously had especially organized dotfiles, so I am using my recent purchase of a used ThinkPad T480 as an opportunity to start fresh. Consequently, this repo is a bit sparse, but it will gradually expand as I continue to use and configure my new computer.

Overview

A stow directory can contain multiple sub-directories, each of which represents a separate program. For example, the hierarchy of my directory as of this writing looks like this:

.
├── bash
│   └── .bashrc
├── git
│   └── .gitconfig
├── vscode
│   └── .config
│       └── Code
│           └── User
│               ├── keybindings.json
│               └── settings.json
└── README.md

The files for each program are stored in a hierarchy which mirrors their real-world locations under $HOME.

Deploying files

You can deploy all the files for a program with stow <program name>:

$ cd .dotfiles
$ stow bash
$ ls -al ~
total 8804
drwxr-xr-x 29 rdnlsmith rdnlsmith    4096 May 11 20:32 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root      root         4096 May  5 17:12 ..
-rw-------  1 rdnlsmith rdnlsmith    2865 May 11 19:44 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 rdnlsmith rdnlsmith     220 May  5 17:12 .bash_logout
lrwxrwxrwx  1 rdnlsmith rdnlsmith      22 May 11 20:01 .bashrc -> .dotfiles/bash/.bashrc

...

As you can see, ~/.bashrc is now a symlink to the .bashrc in the repository. Any time you edit ~/.bashrc, those changes will appear as unstaged edits within the repo, which you can commit and push as appropriate. If you push changes from another device, you can git pull and all of your deployed dotfiles will be immediately up-to-date.

stow conflicts

If ~/.bashrc already existed (as it likely does on a new computer), you will receive a conflict warning:

$ stow bash
WARNING! stowing bash would cause conflicts:
  * existing target is neither a link nor a directory: .bashrc
All operations aborted.

stow wants to protect you from losing data by overwriting your existing files. If you're sure you don't need them, you can delete any files it lists and run stow again. Once a file has been replaced by a symlink from somewhere inside the repo, stow will no longer complain, so it's no problem to re-run stow multiple times.

Cleaning up

If you no longer want to manage a program's files via the repo, you can run stow -D <program name> to delete all the symlinks which were created for that program:

$ cd .dotfiles
$ stow -D bash
$ ls -al ~
total 8804
drwxr-xr-x 29 rdnlsmith rdnlsmith    4096 May 11 20:32 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root      root         4096 May  5 17:12 ..
-rw-------  1 rdnlsmith rdnlsmith    2865 May 11 19:44 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 rdnlsmith rdnlsmith     220 May  5 17:12 .bash_logout

...

It's then up to you to replace e.g. ~/.bashrc with a new file.

Computer-specific settings

If you need a specific machine to have some files be different, you can create a permanent branch for that machine in Git. Later changes that apply to this machine can be merged or cherry-picked into the branch.