Scott Smitelli

Scottfiles

Scottfiles are Scott’s dotfiles. I generally try not to go crazy with the visual tweaks, aliases, or keyboard mappings, mainly because I often have to jump onto unfamiliar servers or freshly-created VMs where these customizations may not be installed. I don’t want my muscles to forget how to use a vanilla Linux installation.

I move through a veritable smörgåsbord of Linux, OS X, and Cygwin environments, and this tends to provoke some interesting cross-platform inconsistencies that I need to paper over. My dotfiles are designed around the GNU Stow installation scheme which allows groups of files to be selectively installed on some systems but not others. This, paired with generous use of *.d/ directories, allows for something approximating a dotfile plugin architecture.

The main entrypoint, if you will, is the custom .bashrc file. This sources everything in the ${HOME}/.bashrc.d directory, which is where most of the other packages register their own entrypoints. Other files (.gitconfig, for example) are symlinked straight into the location where the corresponding tool expects each file to be.

Storing dotfiles in a Git repo, regardless of the way they ultimately get installed, has been one of the better organizational decisions I’ve made. I no longer have disparities between different environments because I forgot to carry a config file tweak from one machine to another.

And above all: I believe that the more people I can share Stow with, the better. Seriously, go give it a try. See if there’s someplace in your life where it can fit.

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