Manage better for my dotfiles
Up until now, I’ve been handling my dotfiles manually with a Makefile and shell scripts. I used commands like rsync to mirror files from my ~/.config directory to my ~/dotfiles folder, and then saved everything on GitHub. While this approach worked, it was tedious and had a lot of limitations:
rsyncwouldn’t handle deletions properly, so if I deleted a file in~/.config, it wouldn’t be removed from the dotfiles folder.- I had to run
make syncevery time I wanted to update my dotfiles - Restoring configurations wasn’t properly handled
- I also wanted to directly manage the
~/.configfolder with Git, but my current setup didn’t make that easy.
Then, I stumbled across a YouTube video about using GNU Stow to manage dotfiles. It’s such a simple yet powerful tool! Stow creates symlinks from your dotfiles folder to your ~/.config directory, so there’s no need for manual mirroring. Everything stays organized and up-to-date automatically.
Now, I manage my ~/dotfiles easily with Stow, and my ~/.config folder is directly synced via symlinks.
I love how clean and efficient this setup feels. Highly recommend giving Stow a try if you’re looking for a better way to manage dotfiles!