GNU Stow

GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software and/or data located in separate directories on the filesystem, and makes them appear to be installed in the same place. Its the centerpiece of the dotfiles repository, the key component that makes everything work.

Install

To install Stow on a Debian-based system run the following command:

root:~$ sudo apt install stow

Usage

You can use Stow to create a symlink of a file to a target directory like this:

user:~$ stow -t ~ file

The -t flag specifies the target directory (in this case the home directory) and file specifies the file you want to mirror via a symlink.

Finally, you can stow all the files in a directory, like the ones in this repository, by simply running:

user:~$ stow .

This command will establish symbolic links for all files in the current directory within the parent directory, maintaining the original directory’s structure.

Ignore Files and Directories

Using stow for bulk symlink creation presents a challenge: What about the files that you don’t want to stow, like the files in the .git directory? By default, stow ignores common files and directories, like .git. You can view the whole list of the files and directories stow ignores by default here.

If you want to add your own files or directories to this list you should create a file with the name .stow-local-ignore, which works just like a .gitignore file but for stow.