Managing Dotfiles with Stow

GNU stow keeps my dotfiles setup predictable, and it still feels underused. Configs live in a normal git repo, and stow projects them into the paths each tool expects.

For example, tmux expects ~/.tmux.conf. The file lives at ~/configs/tmux/.tmux.conf, and stow creates the symlink at ~/.tmux.conf.

My ~/configs layout looks like this:

➜ tree -L 4 -a -I .git ~/configs
/home/matt/configs
├── compton
│   └── .config
│       └── compton.conf
├── fish
│   └── .config
│       └── fish
│           └── config.fish
├── i3
│   └── .config
│       └── i3
│           └── config
├── kitty
│   └── .config
│       └── kitty
│           └── kitty.conf
├── nvim
│   └── .config
│       └── nvim
│           ├── coc-settings.json
│           └── init.vim
├── polybar
│   └── .config
│       └── polybar
│           └── config
├── tmux
│   └── .tmux.conf
└── zathura
    └── .config
        └── zathura
            └── zathurarc

21 directories, 9 files

Applying links:

➜ cd ~/configs
➜ stow compton fish i3 kitty nvim polybar tmux zathura

Removing one package:

➜ cd ~/configs
➜ stow -D nvim

This setup keeps a clean change history, makes rollback easy, and preserves the same config shape across machines.

My configs: https://github.com/mattkubej/configs