4 ms·

Several months ago, I became pretty interested in the idea of a unified computer setup. Between my home computers and work computers, it began weighing on me me

Several months ago, I became pretty interested in the idea of a unified computer setup. Between my home computers and work computers, it began weighing on me mentally to have to switch contexts all the time. I'd forget which machine had `wget`, which `fish` functions were installed on which host, etc. The most tedious thing was the process of setting up a new computer: painstakingly finding each and every little configuration I had on my other machines, and copying them over. I'd spend half a day just setting up a new machine. I wanted something better. I first tried Ira's [mackup](https://github.com/lra/mackup https://github.com/lra/mackup), which syncs files to Dropbox. Its catch-all approach scared me, though, as it backs up `fish` history by default. I decided to move to something different. I ended up basing my dotfiles setup on the GNU [stow](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) utility. Here's how it works: - In `~`, I have a git-managed directory `dotfiles` - For every new app I use, I make a new directory in `dotfiles`. For example, `vim`, `fish`, etc. - I run `stow` on all these directories, and it symlinks everything into place I ended up rolling my own update script, but it's pretty trivial. I also made heavy use of Homebrew brewfiles, which can be used to define what commands you would like to run through Homebrew. I also use [Homebrew Cask](http://caskroom.io/ http://caskroom.io/) to install apps. In the end, I now have the exact same configuration on all my machines. For work, I have a separate branch, which has other fish functions / utilities. I recently got a new computer, and I ran the `update.sh` script while I went to lunch. When I came back, my machine was ready to go. Take a look at my setup [here](https://github.com/peterhajas/dotfiles https://github.com/peterhajas/dotfiles).

shock 12y ago
I think it would be better to use the "--no-folding" argument to stow in your update.sh script, otherwise stow will do something which I find undesired: - let's say you have a file ~/dotfiles/vim-powerlinefonts/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-powerlinefonts.conf and you don't have the ~/.config/fontconfig directory - when you do "stow vim-powerlinefonts" in the dotfiles directory it will create ~/.config/fontconfig as a symlink to your ~/dotfiles/vim-powerlinefonts/.config/fontconfig directory so now you can't add other fontconfig files in ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d - if instead you do "stow --no-folding vim-powerlinefonts" in the dotfiles directory it will create ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/ and there it will symlink 10-powerlinefonts.conf to ~/dotfiles/vim-powerlinefonts/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-powerlinefonts.conf, which is usually what you want.
- e12e 12y ago
  I generally prefer xstow[1] to GNU Stow (if for no other reason than that it doesn't require perl) -- and I couldn't find a reference to --no-folding -- however, at least xstow appear to do the right thing: stow $ find .. .. ../stow ../stow/a ../stow/a/c ../stow/a/c/a ../stow/a/c/b ../stow/b ../stow/b/c ../stow/b/c/c ../stow/b/c/c/a $ xstow b $ ls -l .. total 4 lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 8 Jun 22 16:47 c -> stow/b/c drwxr-xr-x 4 e12e e12e 4096 Jun 22 16:44 stow #drumrolll... $ xstow a $ ls -l .. total 8 drwxr-xr-x 2 e12e e12e 4096 Jun 22 16:48 c drwxr-xr-x 4 e12e e12e 4096 Jun 22 16:44 stow e12e@stripe:~/tmp/stowtest/stow $ ls -l ../c total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 13 Jun 22 16:48 a -> ../stow/a/c/a lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 13 Jun 22 16:48 b -> ../stow/a/c/b lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 13 Jun 22 16:48 c -> ../stow/b/c/c So as long as the symlink is managed by (xstow) -- subdirs will be created as needed. If your point was more about mixing (x)stow'ed and non-stowed files in directories, then you would still want to make sure (x)stow makes the directories, and only symlinks files. I'm not sure if there's an (easy) way to make xstow do that. [1] http://xstow.sourceforge.net/ http://xstow.sourceforge.net/
  - shock 12y ago
    Yes, I was thinking specifically about mixing stowed and non-stowed files in directories, that's why I chose the fontconfig example: it's likely that I will want to add files there that I don't want to stow/sync to other machines. I also find it cleaner using --no-folding and easier to reason about. I remember feeling surprised and not understanding what stow did the first time I used it without --no-folding. Some people might actually prefer the folding behavior, I just wanted to highlight that the default behavior might not be what one would expect.

shock 12y ago

I think it would be better to use the "--no-folding" argument to stow in your update.sh script, otherwise stow will do something which I find undesired: - let's say you have a file ~/dotfiles/vim-powerlinefonts/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-powerlinefonts.conf and you don't have the ~/.config/fontconfig directory - when you do "stow vim-powerlinefonts" in the dotfiles directory it will create ~/.config/fontconfig as a symlink to your ~/dotfiles/vim-powerlinefonts/.config/fontconfig directory so now you can't add other fontconfig files in ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d - if instead you do "stow --no-folding vim-powerlinefonts" in the dotfiles directory it will create ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/ and there it will symlink 10-powerlinefonts.conf to ~/dotfiles/vim-powerlinefonts/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-powerlinefonts.conf, which is usually what you want.

e12e 12y ago
I generally prefer xstow[1] to GNU Stow (if for no other reason than that it doesn't require perl) -- and I couldn't find a reference to --no-folding -- however, at least xstow appear to do the right thing: stow $ find .. .. ../stow ../stow/a ../stow/a/c ../stow/a/c/a ../stow/a/c/b ../stow/b ../stow/b/c ../stow/b/c/c ../stow/b/c/c/a $ xstow b $ ls -l .. total 4 lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 8 Jun 22 16:47 c -> stow/b/c drwxr-xr-x 4 e12e e12e 4096 Jun 22 16:44 stow #drumrolll... $ xstow a $ ls -l .. total 8 drwxr-xr-x 2 e12e e12e 4096 Jun 22 16:48 c drwxr-xr-x 4 e12e e12e 4096 Jun 22 16:44 stow e12e@stripe:~/tmp/stowtest/stow $ ls -l ../c total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 13 Jun 22 16:48 a -> ../stow/a/c/a lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 13 Jun 22 16:48 b -> ../stow/a/c/b lrwxrwxrwx 1 e12e e12e 13 Jun 22 16:48 c -> ../stow/b/c/c So as long as the symlink is managed by (xstow) -- subdirs will be created as needed. If your point was more about mixing (x)stow'ed and non-stowed files in directories, then you would still want to make sure (x)stow makes the directories, and only symlinks files. I'm not sure if there's an (easy) way to make xstow do that. [1] http://xstow.sourceforge.net/ http://xstow.sourceforge.net/
- shock 12y ago
  Yes, I was thinking specifically about mixing stowed and non-stowed files in directories, that's why I chose the fontconfig example: it's likely that I will want to add files there that I don't want to stow/sync to other machines. I also find it cleaner using --no-folding and easier to reason about. I remember feeling surprised and not understanding what stow did the first time I used it without --no-folding. Some people might actually prefer the folding behavior, I just wanted to highlight that the default behavior might not be what one would expect.