Save your Precious Dotfiles with GNU Stow

Table of Contents

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TL;DR
#

Stow is a tool for managing configurations across different programs in your system.

Stow is a symlink farm manager designed to manage distinct sets of software configurations by leveraging symbolic links.

Symbolic Links: Stow creates symbolic links for configuration files.
Main Folder: Create a main folder to store your dotfiles. Each configuration should reside in a separate subdirectory.
Maintain Folder Structure: The folder structure inside the main folder must match the actual location of the configuration files.
Use Stow: Utilize Stow to create and manage symbolic links efficiently.

To install Stow, use the following commands based on your system:

Read the Manual.
Learn more about Stow by reading the manual:
```
man stow
```
Create a directory for storing your dotfiles.
For example, name it mydotfiles.
```
mkdir mydotfiles
```
Create Subdirectories for Configurations.
Each configuration file or folder should have its own subdirectory. The folder structure within mydotfiles must match the actual locations of the files.
For example:
For a .gitconfig file (located in ~), create a git folder.
For fastfetch (located in ~/.config/fastfetch), create fastfetch/.config folder.
create a nested structure:
```
cd mydotfiles
mkdir git
mkdir -p fastfetch/.config
```
Move Configuration Files into mydotfiles.
Transfer the configuration files to their respective subdirectories:
```
mv ~/.gitconfig mydotfiles/git #git
mv ~/.config/fastfetch mydotfiles/fastfetch/.config/ #fastfetch
```
Use Stow to Create Symbolic Links.
Run Stow to generate symbolic links in their original locations:
```
stow git
stow fastfetch
```
The symbolic links are created, and they can be identified by an @ symbol (e.g., .gitconfig@) in some shells like Fish.