Dotfiles Management with GNU Stow

This guide provides instructions on how to use GNU Stow for managing your dotfiles. Stow is a symlink farm manager that makes it easy to manage project installations in your home directory.

Installing GNU Stow

On macOS:

Use Homebrew to install Stow:

brew install stow

On Ubuntu/Debian:

Use APT to install Stow:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install stow

Cloning This Dotfiles Repository

git git@github.com:tku137/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles

Using Stow to Manage Your Dotfiles

Navigate to the dotfiles directory and use Stow to symlink the dotfiles to the home directory.

cd ~/dotfiles
stow folder_name

Replace folder_name with the name of the folder containing the dotfiles you want to manage.

For example, to stow fish and starship configuration, call:

cd ~/dotfiles
stow fish starship

Common Stow Commands

• To symlink files/folders:

stow folder_name

• To remove symlinks:

stow -D folder_name

• To restow (useful for updating symlinks):

stow -R folder_name

Using the --adopt Flag

The --adopt flag is used to tell Stow to adopt existing files into the Stow package. This means that if a file already exists in the target location, Stow will move it into the Stow package directory and create a symlink in its place.

Use with caution, as this will move the existing files into the Stow directory.

stow --adopt folder_name