dotfiles

Alan's dotfiles

Install GNU Stow and clone the repository into ~/.dotfiles. Then, to deploy symlinks:

cd ~/.dotfiles
find * -maxdepth 0 -type d | xargs -d '\n' stow -v

I also keep some secret dotfiles in ~/Dropbox/dotfiles. To deploy those, I would run:

cd ~/Dropbox/dotfiles
stow -vt ~ *

To remove symlinks:

cd ~/.dotfiles
find * -maxdepth 0 -type d | xargs -d '\n' stow -Dv

Similarly for dotfiles in ~/Dropbox/dotfiles:

cd ~/Dropbox/dotfiles
stow -Dvt ~ *

I used to use rcm, but I switched to GNU Stow in June 2019 when I started using Debian and found that apt.thoughtbot.com's SSL certificate had expired just a couple weeks earlier. I prefer rcm's default behavior of creating directories and symlinking to files (whereas Stow symlinks to a directory when it can), but trying to problem-solve installing on Debian was just too much trouble.

I've saved rcm-specific information below.

~/.rcrc:

DOTFILES_DIRS="$HOME/.dotfiles $HOME/Dropbox/dotfiles"
EXCLUDES="LICENSE README.md"

rcupdate() {
    git -C ~/.dotfiles pull &>/dev/null
}