Dotfiles Management

Overview

• The dotfiles are managed using GNU Stow. The idea is simple:
  • For each folder, store/restore the config that's in that respective folder.
  • Reason for having separate folders is that I can restore only the things I want rather than restoring all of them.
  • Again, why, because 2 main reasons: a. My home and my office PC contains may contain different setups. So I make it generic rather than specialized to one setup. If not, then my home config will all over the place in my office config OR vice-versa, which I don't want. b. Say, today my office uses Linux (thankfully, because I love Linux), but let's say I switch to some another organization, which uses Windows, so all my linux config may not work.

How does it work ?

• The bash related dotfiles, (.bashrc, .bash_aliases, etc..) are stored in a folder called 'bash'. So when setting up a new machine and assuming the 'Dotfiles' folder is cloned in $HOME directory, then doing a simple: stow bash, will restore/add the files in proper places in the $HOME directory.

Steps to restore:

• Pre-requisite: Install GNU Stow

sudo apt install stow # This is for ubuntu. Check stow docs for how to install for other platforms

• Clone the repo:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/aniketgm/Dotfiles.git

• Goto inside the Dotfiles and restore whatever you want:

cd Dotfiles
stow bash

• This will restore bash files in the $HOME directory.

• Similarly, doing stow <folder_name_inside_Dotfiles>, will restore other respective configs.

• NOTE: The bashrc file contains an entry at the end for zoxide and starship. So you may want to install that first before using the config.