Managing dotfiles with GNU stow

i3wm

I recently switched to the i3 window manager, which is a tiling window manager for Linux. i3 demo Is an example of how it automatically tiles the windows. For a great demonstration of how beautiful you can get i3 to look visit the Reddit community https://reddit.com/r/unixporn. Don’t worry, its safe for work!

Dotfiles

When working with i3, and the other programs which store their configuration in dotfiles, it is a good idea to backup your dotfiles so in the case of an emergency you haven’t lost your configuration (trust me, you get very attached to it!). It is also helpful when you want to reinstall your configuration on another machine, so you don’t have to manually copy over every file.

If you want a configuration similar to mine, my dotfiles can be found on my Github page.

GNU stow

According to the project page GNU stow is

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 may sound complicated, but essentially it allows you to collect files in one folder and install them to their required location with a single command.

How to use it

Install GNU stow
```
sudo apt install stow
```
Create a directory to store all your dotfiles in
```
mkdir dotfiles
cd dotfiles
```
I would recommend backing this folder up with a version control system, e.g git and storing on github.
Create a folder named the program whose configuration files you want to install. For this example I will install vim’s config file
```
mkdir vim
cd vim
```
The directory now looks like this
```
dotfiles
└── vim
```
Move the configuration file into the directory you just made
```
mv ~/.vimrc .
```
Directory now looks like this
```
dotfiles
└── vim
    └── .vimrc
```
Install the configuration file back to its correct location. Must be done from root directory, dotfiles in this case.
```
stow vim
```
All the files inside of the vim folder will now be moved to ~/

For more complex configuration files which aren’t just inside ~ you must add the folders inside the directory. For example with the i3 config is stored at ~/.config/i3/config. When making a new directory inside dotfiles imagine it is the home directory. So to create a folder to install the i3 config the directory structure would now look like this

dotfiles
└── vim
       └── .vimrc
    i3
       └── .config
           └── i3
              ├── config

So I hope you now know how to use GNU stow to manage your dotfiles!