Linux

You guys manage your dot files? Huh!

I version them with Git.

Git and a script file that's basically just a ton of ln - s commands

I honestly don't think I've ever found myself wanting more

Home-manager on NixOs. It handles more than just dotfiles, as it also manages installed programs.

I didn't even know that was a thing, I just keep it in a git repo

I'm extremely happy with chezmoi. It's very simple to use, but when you need more advanced features, it has them. It can do templates, ignoring and other stuff allowing you to easily manage dotfiles on multiple machines or even multiple operating systems (like windows on PC, Linux on laptop). Here is a comparison table of some dotfiles manager (it's on chezmoi's website, so it may be biased) Also here are my dotfiles (as a Linux user, I cannot resist the urge to share my dotfiles whenever I have the opportunity)

Git

I used yadm for a while and liked it. It is a git wrapper that makes git'ing your home folder for config files less messy

https://yadm.io/

Now I don't care so much for keeping settings anymore and use mainly vanilla settings, therefore I stopped using it

cp -r to an external drive. And cp -r back in case something goes wrong.

I know, it's boring and no way "modern". But hey, it works and it does not require internet access!

NixOS + home-manager

nuking your home directory

Imho, in that case, you should look int a more proper backup strategy to restore all your files, not just your configs.

a git repository configured to ignore basically everything except the dotfiles. For my sway config I load configs from a symlinked folder, which points to a different config depending on the machine being configured.

home-manager. a divine tool for ~~maniacs~~ Nix users that lets you do declarative dotfile management

I've tried several dotfile managers, but after adding my files I interact with them so infrequently I forget how to use them.

The thing which finally stuck is this method from Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles

Your entire home directory is a bare git repo which ignores untracked files. It's just plain git so there is no additional tool to learn or forget.

I've put my vim plugins as git submodules so they're easily and efficiently tracked and updated too.

Git, GNU Stow, and a custom bash script.

lazy git plus gnu stow works great for me

ls and nano 💪

I didn't know this was a thing. I just use a USB and my nextcloud and copy my home folder with distro and date appended to the name.

I use git and nix (home-manager) for most of my dotfiles. The main advantage of this is that if manages dotfiles, but also you whole user environment, so you can install some software that you need for your rice for example. It's very powerfull, but it takes time to get it to work properly since you have to learn nix expressions !

Manager? I just use a good old shell script that mirrors a tree structure into my home folder.

I use chezmoi for mine. I haven't had to restore after a nuke yet (hopefully not anytime) but its really simple IMO. Its basically a git wrapper, so there you have your version control. You create a dotfiles repo in your GitHub, initialise your home as a local repo and point it there using chezmoi, and then its as simple as typing "chezmoi add myfile" to start tracking the file in the repo. Then I simply do "chezmoi cd" followoed by the standard git commands to commit and push changes to remote.

Check it out, I'm happy working with it across my desktop and laptop (working on the same config files across both pcs).

I use a bare git repo in .dotfiles/ that uses the home folder as a working tree, configured the repository to ignore untracked files, and then just add my dotfiles if there's a change.

To setup working dirs I aliased that to dtf

rsync and rm

I use git-annex and Guix (particularly Guix Home in this case) for managing all of my data, including dotfiles. git-annex handles syncing (and backups via delivery to a Borg repo) and version management as git does, while Guix takes care of installing programs and setting up configuration files.

I previously wrote a custom Guix service that utilized Stow as well for managing writable files, but have since replaced it with another custom Guix service that handles some cleanup processes better.

Depending on how much you want simplicity of restoration, this approach might be on the heavier side since it's concerned with a lot more than just dotfiles. You could replace git-annex with git to simplify the syncing part if you're only interested in managing configuration files, though. Here's what my Guix config looks like; the readme file shows how I would set up a system from scratch.

dotdrop, because different dotfiles per OS/hist is supported (I am usingfedora, Ubuntu, Debian, macOS but you can configure it as you wish).

chezmoi, although I am not sure I like it. Its the first I tried and some stuff seems very complicated.

I tried a bunch that weren't quite what I needed before landing on rcm - https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm

Never have, definitely need to tho

I use home-manager

I just rsync my home dir to a backup and then rsync it to a new machine

My own intricate system of 4 git repos to manage dotfiles, bash initialization, cli tools/scripts, and system state.

The last one keeps track of installed packages and "dotfiles" out of the home directory (system config files like /etc/hosts).

You don’t need a dotfile manager, you need proper backups.