Dotfiles

Dotfiles collection managed with GNU Stow

Overview

The dotfiles are grouped in so called stow packages. Each package represents the file structure relative to ~ for a collection of dotfiles.

Here is a very basic example:

.
├── kitty
│   └── .config
│       └── kitty
│           └── kitty.conf
├── mc
│   └── .config
│       └── mc
│           ├── ini
│           └── menu
└── nvim
    └── .config
        └── nvim
            └── init.lua

Running stow nvim inside the dotfiles directory would then create a symlink like:

~/.config/nvim/init.lua -> path/to/dotfiles/nvim/.config/nvim/init.lua

This happens for every file in a package.

Creating a stow package

Here's an example for creating a stow package for nvim:

# Create the package direcotry.
mkdir -p ~/dotfiles/nvim

# Copy existing dotfiles to the package including their relative parent dirs.
# Repeat this for every file you want to include in the package.
cd ~
cp --parents .config/nvim/init.lua ~/dotfiles/nvim/

# Install the stow package.
# This replaces the original files with symlinks to the stow package.
cd ~/dotfiles
stow nvim

This example assumes your dotfiles direcotry is located at ~/dotfiles. The actual location does not matter though.