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• introduction
• managing
• installing
• how it works
• tl;dr

in the unix world programs are commonly configured in two different ways, via shell arguments or text based configuration files. programs with many options like window managers or text editors are configured on a per-user basis with files in your home directory ~. in unix like operating systems any file or directory name that starts with a period or full stop character is considered hidden, and in a default view will not be displayed. thus the name dotfiles.

it's been said of every console user:

"you are your dotfiles".

since they dictate how your system will look and function. to many users (see ricers and beaners) these files are very important, and need to be backed up and shared. The easiest way is the following.

i manage mine with gnu stow, a free, portable, lightweight symlink farm manager. this allows me to keep a versioned directory of all my config files that are virtually linked into place via a single command. this makes sharing these files among many users (root) and computers super simple. and does not clutter your home directory with version control files.

stow is available for all linux and most other unix like distributions via your package manager.

• sudo pacman -S stow
• sudo apt-get install stow
• brew install stow

or clone it from source and build it yourself.

by default the stow command will create symlinks for files in the parent directory of where you execute the command. so my dotfiles setup assumes this repo is located in the root of your home directory ~/dotfiles. and all stow commands should be executed in that directory. otherwise you'll need to use the -d flag with the repo directory location.

to install most of my configs you execute the stow command with the folder name as the only argument.

to install my git config use the command:

stow git

this will symlink files to ~/.gitconfig

But you can override the default behavior add symlink files to another location with the -t (target) argument flag.

to install the connman config you need to execute the command:

sudo stow -t / connman

this will symlink the file to /etc/connman.

navigate to your home directory

cd ~

clone the repo:

git clone [email protected]:DonPavlov/dotfiles.git

enter the dotfiles directory

cd dotfiles

install the fish settings

stow fish

install fish settings for the root user

sudo stow fish -t /root

install connman (for i3)

stow connman

uninstall connman (for i3)

stow -D connman

etc, etc, etc...

Add a new thing by creating a folder in dotfiles directory and create the original structure, move the config file over into your dotfiles directory and stow newthing

sync it with git

git add . git commit -m " commit" git push

Keep files which are already present git stow git --adopt will keep the already present file, replace it with a symlink and if you use git you may roll back and keep your new changes.