Clone this repository with:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/brgmnn/dotfiles.git

The --recursive flag includes submodules. If you forgot to clone with --recursive then you can just run the following command from the repository root:

git submodule update --init --recursive

If you want to clone and install my dotfiles as I do, then you will need the following things installed:

• Git
• GNU Stow

You can of course use code snippets, download folders over http and place them wherever you like in which case you won't need all/any of these dependencies.

I use GNU Stow to place the dotfiles in my home directory as followed from this guide:

http://taihen.org/managing-dotfiles-with-gnu-stow/

Group different applications or machines or whatever you want under subfolders in dotfiles, for example:

~/dotfiles/
    bash/
        .bashrc
        .bashrc_aliases
    bin/
        bin/
            script.sh
            my-tool.py
    irssi/
        .config
    themes/
    vim/
        .vimrc
        .vim/
            bundle/
            colors/
    zsh/
        .zshrc
        .zshenv

In this example all files relating to vim are grouped under a vim folder, all bash files under a bash folder etc.

Then load a subfolder (for instance vim) with:

cd ~/dotfiles
stow vim

To unload a subfolder:

stow -D vim

To reload a subfolder:

stow -R vim

Use -t to load symlinks in any location:

stow -t /home/user vim

Using Stow it becomes very easy to load and unload a collection of dotfiles in to your home folder. While it doesn't seem to give many benefits if you just want a copy of your ~/.vim folder, it works well in cases where you need to merge folders (provided there are file conflicts).

For example, if you have a folder ~/bin which contains files that look something like:

$ ls -lah ~/bin
drwxr-xr-x.  2 dan user 4.0K Dec  3 22:54 .
drwxr-xr-x. 39 dan user 4.0K Dec  4 19:18 ..
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 dan user  16K Nov 28 21:19 ffmpeg
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 dan user  513 Oct  7 18:08 localscript.sh
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 dan user   65 Oct 14 19:26 localscript2.py

After running stow bin from the dotfiles repository, your ~/bin folder would now look something like this:

$ ls -lah ~/bin
drwxr-xr-x.  2 dan user 4.0K Dec  3 22:54 .
drwxr-xr-x. 39 dan user 4.0K Dec  4 19:18 ..
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 dan user  16K Nov 28 21:19 ffmpeg
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 dan user  513 Oct  7 18:08 localscript.sh
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 dan user   65 Oct 14 19:26 localscript2.py
lrwxrwxrwx.  1 dan user   27 Dec  3 22:54 script.sh -> ../dotfiles/bin/bin/script.sh
lrwxrwxrwx.  1 dan user   28 Dec  3 22:54 my-tool.py -> ../dotfiles/bin/bin/my-tool.py

Stow has only symlinked the files it needed to. If however there was no existing ~/bin folder then Stow would simply symlink the folder.

If in doubt over when you need to reload folders with Stow, just reload every time you add or remove files. This way any changes should appear in the correct places.