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+title = "GNU Stow"
+author = ["Michał Sapka"]
+date = 2022-06-09T22:26:00+02:00
+lastmod = 2023-12-29T22:52:33+01:00
+categories = ["article", "update"]
+draft = false
+weight = 2004
+abstract = "GNU Stow is a tool for managing symlink farms, used primarily for dotfiles. Here you can find a short guide on how to use it."
++++
+
+If you are working with Linux/BSD based system, you are most likely accustomed to managing your configs with dotfiles.
+And you most likely have them stored with Git.
+But there is the never ending problem of how to actually use them.
+I have moved management of this under GNU Stow.
+
+Let's take a very typical dotfiles repository.
+
+```shell
+./nvim/init.lua
+./tmux/tmux.conf
+```
+
+You want to have those files available as
+
+```shell
+~/.config/nvim/init.lua
+~/.tmux.conf
+```
+
+The most popular approach would be to symlink the files under the expected location.
+We could also copy the files every time something changes, but that would be crazy.
+Are we the stuck with having to do those symlinks manually every time we install a new machine or create a virtual one? And what if we have dozens of such configs stored under git?
+
+
+## Symlink farm {#symlink-farm}
+
+GNU Stow is a symlink farm.
+This means, that it's a system aimed at automating creating of those symlinks.
+
+[GNU Stow website](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/manual/stow.html)
+
+For Stow, the dotfiles directory is called "Stowed" directory.
+Now comes the cool part.
+Each folder in the Stowed directory (called "Package directory") stores a separate directory tree.
+GNU Stow will join all those separate trees and create a proper structure under Target Directory, which by default is the parent of Stowed directory.
+Let's look at example.
+
+```shell
+~/target/stow/one/config/one.conf
+~/target/stow/two/config/two.conf
+~/target/stow/three/config/three.conf
+```
+
+So, our home director now has a "Target" directory, which has a "Stow" directory.
+The Stow directory stores three configs which we want to symlink as
+
+```shell
+~/target/config/one.conf
+~/target/config/two.conf
+~/target/config/three.conf
+```
+
+Let's stow the first one
+
+```shell
+cd ~/target/stow
+stow one
+```
+
+And see what happened
+
+```shell
+cd ~/target
+ls -lA
+```
+
+We get something like
+
+```shell
+lrwxrwxrwx 1 msapka wheel   15 Jun  9 23:01 config -> stow/one/config
+drwxr-xr-x 5 msapka wheel 4096 Jun  9 22:55 stow
+```
+
+Stow created a config symlink in the target directory.
+Very cool, but it gets cooler! Let' stow the second one
+
+```shell
+cd ~/target/stow
+stow two
+```
+
+and what we get
+
+```shell
+drwxr-xr-x 2 msapka wheel 4096 Jun  9 23:03 config
+drwxr-xr-x 5 msapka wheel 4096 Jun  9 22:55 stow
+```
+
+Our config is no longer a symlink, but a real folder.
+Let's see what's inside here.
+
+```shell
+cd config
+ls -lA
+```
+
+```shell
+lrwxrwxrwx 1 msapka wheel 27 Jun  9 23:03 one.conf -> ../stow/two/config/one.conf
+lrwxrwxrwx 1 msapka wheel 26 Jun  9 23:03 two.conf -> ../stow/one/config/two.conf
+```
+
+We have our two configs, but what has happened?
+Stow looked at both subtrees for "one" and "two" and joined them in a way, that is possible.
+The only way for one.conf and two.conf to exist in config is if config is a normal directory. Extremely cool!
+
+Let's image that our target is actually homedir, so we have a ~/dotfiles directory.
+Then each package directory can mimic the tree structure of the actual config! Coming back to our example, we can have a
+
+```shell
+~/dotfiles/tmux/.tmux.conf
+~/dotfiles/nvim/.config/nvim/init.lua
+```
+
+Then, after stowing both packages we have symlinks under our desired
+
+```shell
+~/.config/nvim/init.lua
+~/.tmux.conf
+```
+
+GNU Stow is a very simple tool. All we need to understand what will happen with each subtree.