
Show HN: Manage Dotfiles with Stow - codejamninja
https://github.com/codejamninja/dotstow
======
pcr910303
_The_ method to manage dotfiles is to use git bare repos. [0-1] Its the ideal
method as:

* It doesn’t require any configuration except for a ‘git init’ once & an alias (no symlinks, no b.s.)

* Files are version-controlled

* It’s unintrusive & universal: Because it doesn’t move any files or do anything special, there’s no surprising behavior, and you can try out a few files & stop using it with an rm -rf

* and on and on...

I strongly recommend eveybody trying out, no meed for configuration/mapping,
and it’s easy to try out.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754)

[1]:
[https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles)

~~~
codejamninja
that’s the way everyone first tries it

~~~
saagarjha
It is not.

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twp
Also consider [https://chezmoi.io/](https://chezmoi.io/) which has many
advantages over Stow+git (e.g. manage files that vary across machines,
password manager integration, transparent encryption, create real files not
symlinks, dry-run and diff modes, and many more).

Disclaimer: I'm the author of chezmoi.

~~~
qmmmur
By the way, the link to the install instructions is broken on the front page,
however the sidebar link works.

~~~
twp
Thanks for the report :) Fixed.

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kaikoenig
Five years ago we had a really broken production and development setup which
required working on remote machines that we reset each week. I spend a lot of
time ricing my setup but could not find a dotfile management tool that would
fulfill all my needs - so naturally, I wrote one - of course ^^

And I still use it today even though we quickly switched to docker after
realizing what mistake we made.

Anyhow this is the thing I use
[https://github.com/kairichard/lace](https://github.com/kairichard/lace)
together with my dotfile configuration
[https://github.com/kairichard/dotfiles/blob/master/.lace.yml](https://github.com/kairichard/dotfiles/blob/master/.lace.yml)

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CGamesPlay
Looks like a nice wrapper around Stow+git, which is great! Make sure to add to
[https://dotfiles.github.io/](https://dotfiles.github.io/) for the exposure,
and read through the solutions described there for ideas for future
improvements.

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_-david-_
I have used stow before but I don't always want to name files what they are
named.

When I want to edit a file I type vim but I can't always remember what the
name of the file. I use tab to cycle through the files but it doesn't show dot
files. I then have to type . then tab through the files.

I find this pretty annoying so I remove the dots in my dotfile repo but then
stow wasn't symlinking to the correct file since there should be a dot

Does anybody have a solution that lets you alias files but still use stow or
an alternative?

I don't want to write my own script or change the behavior of tabbing through
files to also show dot files.

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mfontani
I've moved a while back to yadm[1], and largely prefer it over stow.

Has somebody used both, and still uses stow? What is your experience with
both?

[1]: [https://yadm.io/](https://yadm.io/)

------
semente
I do have a simple Bash tool similar to Stow. It behave differently in some
situations which I consider better for installing dotfiles. If you are
interested:
[https://gitlab.com/semente/summon](https://gitlab.com/semente/summon)

Tested on GNU/Linux only. I appreciate feedback of OSX/BSD users and pull
requests to increase its compatibility with systems other than GNU/Linux.

------
egze
I use [https://github.com/lra/mackup](https://github.com/lra/mackup) and love
it. Takes care also about application configs.

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jasonpeacock
stow is nice, but it's too basic once you start managing your homedir in
earnest across multiple machines and need machine-specific configurations,
secrets, etc.

I prefer homeshick[0], a Bash port of homesick[1] (which is Ruby).

[0]
[https://github.com/andsens/homeshick](https://github.com/andsens/homeshick)
[1]
[https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick](https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick)

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codejamninja
I built dotstow as a simple way to combine 2 really great technologies, git
and stow.

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kissgyorgy
You don't need this. Just put your dotfiles in a structure stow likes and use
stow without any other tooling. I'm using stow for years without any
complicated setup or any other library or tools. It's great and I never have a
problem!

