Stowing Your Dotfiles

Linux differs from other operating systems in how most applications are configured - through files. Using text for configuration might seem as a step-back, however, GUI configurations were never a progression.

Having applications configured through text has a couple of advantages:

• Portable - any computer which can install that application can have the same configuration.
• The light level of configuration - some Linux distributions, such as NixOS, offer a system level configuration. However, this would invalidate the first point, and the level of configuration would be potentially limited through the configuration of the distribution.
• The stow method is minimal and re-uses packaging software for dotfiles.

Your dotfiles in Git

In order to have portable dotfiles, you need a method of update & transport. For that, you can use Git.

To set up your dotfiles for the first time:

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$ mkdir .dotfiles
$ cd .dotfiles
$ git init
$ git remote add origin <your-url>

Inside the .dotfiles directory, create your configuration files:

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$ ll .dotfiles
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x 21 ayham ayham 4.0K Jan  9 09:40 .config
drwxr-xr-x  8 ayham ayham 4.0K Jan  9 16:27 .git
-rw-r--r--  1 ayham ayham  135 May 21  2022 .gitignore
drwxr-xr-x  4 ayham ayham 4.0K Jul 14  2021 .local
-rwx------  1 ayham ayham 2.0K Oct  3 15:23 .zprofile

Installing Your Dotfiles

To install your configurations on a new Linux install:

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$ git clone <your-url>
$ cd .dotfiles/
$  stow --target=/home/<your-user> .

Now you would have your files linked in your home directory:

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$ ls -al
...
lrwxrwxrwx   1 ayham ayham   19 Jul 14  2021 .zprofile -> .dotfiles/.zprofile
...

Enjoy!