i take a Phoenix approach with my dotfiles.

Once a decade when my computer crashes and burns, from the ashes emerges a blank slate of dotfiles that is purged of all unnecessary hacks that have accumulated. With a tear and a hopeful outlook, I rush to set the settings I am actually dependent on.

I really need to take more interest in backing up my dotfiles 😭

Git and symbolic links still.

Ive heard good things about GNU Stow.

https://github.com/harryprayiv/nix-config

I’m surprised it’s not already mentioned in these comments: https://yadm.io/

I’ve done symlinks into a separate directory before, but by far my favorite method is to just let ~ be a git repo. It’s maximally simple, no other tooling needed besides git.

There are a few key steps to making this work well:

• echo '*' > ~/.gitignore: This way git status isn’t full of untracked files. I can still git add -f what I actually want to track.
• git branch -m dots: For clarity in my shell prompt.
• [ -d "$HOME/.local/$(hostname)/bin" ] && PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/$(hostname)/bin and similar if there’s config I want to apply only to certain hosts.

I’m all in on nix with home-manager these days. Really seems like an ideal framework for my dotfiles and of all the systems I’ve tried over the years this is the one I’m happiest with.

Hell of a learning curve, though.