portable-dotfiles

This is a collection of dotfiles suitable for cross-platform use.

It aims to provides a subset of configurations necessary for a comfortable and usable shell environment in any context, without requiring any external dependencies.

This is particularly convenient when dealing with disposable shell sessions or SSH servers with only default configurations.

Managing dotfiles with GNU Stow

1. Git clone portable-dotfiles repository and create a .dotfiles subdirectory (stow directory) in your home directory. Your home directory should look something like this:

home/
    zqkng/
        .dotfiles/
            vim/
                dot-vimrc
            tmux/
                dot-tmux.conf
            zsh/
                dot-zsh/
                    [...]
                dot-zprofile
                dot-zshrc

2. Then, perform the following commands:

$ cd ~/.dotfiles
$ stow --dotfiles vim
$ stow --dotfiles tmux
$ stow --dotfiles zsh

3. stow will put all configuration files in the correct place by creating the necessary symbolic links to the source file in the stow directory: .dotfiles/.

NOTES:

• stow can only create symbolic links one level up from the source directory.
• When stowing, if an existing target file is encountered (not owned by any existing stow package), then stow will not proceed (raises conflict error).
  • To change this behavior, use stow --adopt.
  • The existing target file will be moved to the same relative place within the stow directory and then stowing proceeds as before.
  • Effectively, the file becomes adopted by the stow package, without its contents changing.

One-time shell sessions

vim

vim -u ~/portable-dotfiles/vim/dot-vimrc

tmux

tmux -f ~/portable-dotfiles/tmux/dot-tmux.conf

zsh

ZDOTDIR=~/portable-dotfiles/zsh/dot-zsh
source ~/portable-dotfiles/zsh/dot-zshrc