I have a lot of dotfiles. Initially, I managed them using symlinks, but maintaining a bunch of symlinks by hand is a bit tedious. Then I tried using stuff like YADM and chezmoi and was left disappointed. They are just a bit too complicated for a simple task of managing a bunch of configuration files and keeping them accessible from the right location.

So, symlinks. But instead of managing them by hand, manage them with GNU Stow. This is a simple tool, that just takes your files and symlinks them where they need to be.

This is the structure of my repo with dotfiles:

.config
├── bat
├── fish
├── mpv
├── tmux
├── wezterm
└── yazi

It essentially emulates the actual structure what is happening in the home directory. Install GNU Stow and run stow -t $HOME . and everything gets symlinked to where it needs to be. Magic. One thing done right without stupid back and forth. You open the file from the repo, you open it from ~/.config/..., doesn't matter, the change will apply regardless. The embodiment of the UNIX philosphy. And then you just manage it with git. Want something automatically encrypted in that repo? There are tools for that, and they are good at it.

That's it, that's peak configuration management.