DISCLAIMER

I won't continue this project as there are already better alternatives out there:

• nix
• dotbot
• aconfmgr

StowY (Stow YAML wrapper)

StowY is a wrapper around GNU Stow that adds support for package configuration files written in YAML.

Requirements

• python version 3.7+
  • pyyaml
• stow

Package Configurations

Each package may contain a package.yaml configuration file with the following contents:

# Controls the `stow --target` option (default=$HOME)
Target: /path/to/target
# Changes the ownership of the packages files (default=$USER)
Owner: root
# Execute any commands at certain hook points
PreStow:  # Executed before any package is stowed
    - pacman -Sy --needed some-arch-package
    - pacman -S --needed --asdeps some-optional-dependency
PostStow:  # Executed after all packages were stowed
    - mkdir ~/.cache/some-arch-package
PreUnstow:  # Executed before any packages are unstowed
    - pacman -Rns some-arch-package; true
    - "pacman -Qdtq | grep -q some-optional-dependency\
      && pacman -Rns some-optional-dependency"
PostUnstow:  # Executed after all packages were stowed
    - rm -rf ~/.cache/some-arch-package

Any omitted options assume the default value.

YAML Pitfalls

• A literal ~ is interpreted as a null value in YAML, use $HOME or '~' instead.
• There are other special character which your values can't begin with. If you're unsure, just use quotes.

Relation to GNU Stow

Since StowY is only a relatively small wrapper around GNU Stow, packages used by Stow are fully compatible with those used by StowY and vice versa. The only thing to note is that you probably want to add ^/package.yaml to your ~/.stow-global-ignore if you want to use Stow with StowY packages. StowY is not a drop-in replacement for GNU Stow in the sense that it doesn't support every argument that Stow does (because some make no sense with StowY) and its argument parsing, while trying to replicate Stow's, doesn't work in entirely the same way.

Further Documentation

• GNU Stow manual: info stow
• stowy -h
• You may also inspect StowY's source code (especially main.py), it's not very complex.