I’m wondering if there is a new tool out there that I’m missing out on.
Git and symbolic links still.
Ive heard good things about GNU Stow.
i take a Phoenix approach with my dotfiles.
Once a decade when my computer crashes and burns, from the ashes emerges a blank slate of dotfiles that is purged of all unnecessary hacks that have accumulated. With a tear and a hopeful outlook, I rush to set the settings I am actually dependent on.
I really need to take more interest in backing up my dotfiles 😭
https://www.chezmoi.io/ if you’ve got some complexity with your setup. otherwise, could be overkill.
I use Chezmoi but I have to point out some of its downfalls vs. other dotfile managers, particularly if someone is looking to migrate to it.
- Go’s templating lib is incredibly unergonomic.
- Identifying file perms and visibility in by special naming convention is pretty gross. Also makes it more difficult to migrate to another solution.
- If you’re deleting files, you need to remember to do it through
chezmoi remove .... You can’t justrmthem from your dotfiles directory, because chezmoi does not sync state; it simply applies what’s currently in your repo. - Handling multiple systems through .chezmoiignore ends up being overly verbose and unintuitive vs. the approach used by other dotfile managers
Despite these gripes I still use it because deployment via a single binary is convenient, and there’s enough control through the generated config file + system info to handle multiple kinds of deployments sort-of-sensibly (see point 4 above).
Like to see so many fellow nix(os)ers here, I think the amount/ratio of nixers here is quite a bit higher than previously on reddit.
