a git repository configured to ignore basically everything except the dotfiles. For my sway config I load configs from a symlinked folder, which points to a different config depending on the machine being configured.

Git and a script file that’s basically just a ton of ln - s commands

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever found myself wanting more

git.

In all honesty, I’d just write a bash script, potentially reading from a file listing all the dotfiles you want to back up, copy them into some directory and pushing to a git repo. Run that script on a systemd timer (or manually) and write another script deploying them into the correct locations

rsync and rm

lazy git plus gnu stow works great for me

I use chezmoi for mine. I haven’t had to restore after a nuke yet (hopefully not anytime) but its really simple IMO. Its basically a git wrapper, so there you have your version control. You create a dotfiles repo in your GitHub, initialise your home as a local repo and point it there using chezmoi, and then its as simple as typing “chezmoi add myfile” to start tracking the file in the repo. Then I simply do “chezmoi cd” followoed by the standard git commands to commit and push changes to remote.

Check it out, I’m happy working with it across my desktop and laptop (working on the same config files across both pcs).

deleted by creator

I used yadm for a while and liked it. It is a git wrapper that makes git’ing your home folder for config files less messy

https://yadm.io/

Now I don’t care so much for keeping settings anymore and use mainly vanilla settings, therefore I stopped using it

ls and nano 💪

I’m extremely happy with chezmoi. It’s very simple to use, but when you need more advanced features, it has them. It can do templates, ignoring and other stuff allowing you to easily manage dotfiles on multiple machines or even multiple operating systems (like windows on PC, Linux on laptop). Here is a comparison table of some dotfiles manager (it’s on chezmoi’s website, so it may be biased) Also here are my dotfiles (as a Linux user, I cannot resist the urge to share my dotfiles whenever I have the opportunity)

I use a Git repo for the files, and a simple Makefile to script the correct paths and optional install steps for them

I use a bare git repo in .dotfiles/ that uses the home folder as a working tree, configured the repository to ignore untracked files, and then just add my dotfiles if there’s a change.

To setup working dirs I aliased that to dtf

I’ve used homeshick https://github.com/andsens/homeshick for a few years and it’s been running fine. It can load two git repos, one common public repo and one private one for work config.

I searched so long for a good solution to this. Ended up using stow + git. I’m quite happy with it.

This video shows how it works:

https://youtu.be/90xMTKml9O0?si=zsmkoOCgyuiBOlir

Git