Dotfiles

Dotfiles and shell scripts to set up my macOS and Linux machines for development. Symlinks are managed with GNU Stow.

Layout

• common/ — dotfiles shared between macOS and Linux (Stow package).
• macos/ — macOS-only dotfiles and setup (Stow package).
• linux/ — Linux-only dotfiles and setup (Stow package).
• bin/ — the setup orchestrator and shared install steps (not symlinked).
• Repo files (README.md, AGENTS.md, LICENSE, ...) live at the root and are not symlinked.

Each package mirrors $HOME. For example common/.config/fish/config.fish is linked to ~/.config/fish/config.fish.

Install

On macOS, install the Command Line Tools first:

xcode-select --install

Clone the repo and run setup:

git clone https://github.com/AlessioRocco/dotfiles ~/dotfiles
~/dotfiles/bin/setup

bin/setup installs Stow, links the common package, then links and runs the setup for the current OS (macos or linux).

Managing symlinks

Run Stow from the repo root (.stowrc sets the target to $HOME and --no-folding):

stow common          # link shared dotfiles
stow macos           # link macOS-only dotfiles (or: stow linux)
stow -R common       # re-link after adding/removing files
stow -D common       # unlink
stow -n -v common    # dry-run (preview without changing anything)

--no-folding keeps real directories with per-file symlinks, so tools that write into their config dirs (fisher, mise, LazyVim) don't write into the repo.

Notes

• OS-specific differences are handled with stowed fragments:
  • ~/.gitconfig.os (included by ~/.gitconfig) carries the SSH signing program per platform.
  • ~/.config/fish/conf.d/os.fish carries Homebrew paths per platform.

License

Dotfiles is (c) 2019-2026 Alessio Rocco It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.