Udots: Easily Stow Your Dotfiles

Micro Dots

This is a bash script that automates the manual process of making a stow directory and inserting files.

1. Auto-creating subdirectories matching file path.
2. Basic features:
   • Add to stow directory.
   • Link/Unlink.
   • List packages in stow directory.
3. Config file with some useful customizations.
4. Overriding config file options with passed arguments.
5. Deleting a package inside the stow directory.
6. Auto-backup of files added in their directory or a custom directory.
7. Colored output.

1. Clone the repo and make install script executable.

2. Execute install with YOUR repo dir as an argument. CHANGE command accordingly.

You can execute udots -h anytime to bring the help page.

I spent 5 years using Linux without backing up my config files. Every time I reinstalled or changed distros I would redo all my config from scratch which wasted many hours or even days.

I became frustrated, started searching for a solution and found git bare which was nice and did the job but many people online recommended using gnu stow instead, so I went to try it out.

At first I was confused. Why the heck do I have to create a directory, create subdirectories, move individual files and back them up? However, I found immediate back-linking and the ease of swapping configs quite useful and even better than making a git bare repo.

This script aims to simplify the manual steps of this process. I hope it saves you some time as it did for me.

1. Pure Bash Bible helped me a lot.
2. Logo is created by ChatGPT.