GNU Stow for Dotfiles - Quick Start Examples

README.md

GNU Stow for Dotfiles - Quick Start

Examples from GNU Stow for Dotfiles.

Structure

~/dotfiles/
├── bash/
│   ├── .bashrc
│   └── .bashrc.d/
│       ├── 10-aliases.sh
│       └── 20-prompt.sh
├── git/
│   ├── .gitconfig
│   └── .gitignore.global
└── tmux/
    └── .tmux.conf

Each top-level directory is a package. Contents mirror your home directory.

Commands

# Install a package
cd ~/dotfiles && stow bash

# Remove a package
cd ~/dotfiles && stow -D bash

# Install multiple packages
cd ~/dotfiles && stow bash git tmux

# Preview (dry run)
cd ~/dotfiles && stow -n bash

Getting Started

# 1. Create repo
mkdir ~/dotfiles && cd ~/dotfiles && git init

# 2. Move first config
mkdir bash && mv ~/.bashrc bash/ && stow bash

# 3. Verify
ls -la ~/.bashrc  # should show symlink

Files to Ignore

Create .stow-local-ignore in any package (Perl regex):

^README\.md$
^\.git

What Stow Doesn't Do

• Secrets management
• Machine-specific configs
• Templating
• Package installation

For those, see the next article on Ansible + Stow.

example-bashrc

# ~/.bashrc - sourced by bash for interactive shells
# This file lives at ~/dotfiles/bash/.bashrc

# Source all fragments from .bashrc.d/
if [ -d "$HOME/.bashrc.d" ]; then
    for file in "$HOME/.bashrc.d"/*.sh; do
        [ -r "$file" ] && source "$file"
    done
    unset file
fi

example-gitconfig

# ~/.gitconfig - Git configuration
# This file lives at ~/dotfiles/git/.gitconfig

[user]
    name = Your Name
    email = you@example.com

[core]
    excludesfile = ~/.gitignore.global
    editor = nvim

[init]
    defaultBranch = main

[pull]
    rebase = true

[alias]
    st = status
    co = checkout
    br = branch
    ci = commit
    lg = log --oneline --graph --decorate