Take back your dotfiles with Chezmoi

In Linux, dotfiles are hidden text files that are used to store various configuration settings for many such as Bash and Git to more complex applications like i3 or VSCode.

Most of these files are contained in the ~/.config directory or right in the home directory. Editing these files allows you to customize applications beyond what a settings menu may provide, and they tend to be portable across devices and even other Linux distributions. But one talking point across the Linux enthusiast community is how to manage these dotfiles and how to share them.

If you search GitHub for dotfiles, what you will see are over 100k repositories after one goal: Store people’s dotfiles in a shareable and repeatable manor. However, other than using git, they store their files differently.

While Git has solved code management problems that also translates to config file management, It does not solve how to separate between distributions, roles (such as home vs work computers) secrets management, and per device configuration.

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