This use case is one of the expressed reasons for stow's existence. "GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software and/or data l

This use case is one of the expressed reasons for stow's existence. "GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software and/or data located in separate directories on the filesystem, and makes them appear to be installed in the same place. This is particularly useful [to] facilitate a more controlled approach to management of configuration files in the user's home directory, especially when coupled with version control systems." [1] Installing a single binary might be easier than installing a scripting environment on a server that may have existing versioning considerations. (brew install stow | sudo apt-get install stow) You literally type `stow bash` and you're done. ---- [1]: http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/