Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderCall me old fashioned but what's wrong with having a regular git repo anywhere you want with all of your dotfiles and them symlink those files to where they need to go? If you wanted to you could && a few symlinks and other commands into 1 copy / paste'able command to get up and running really quickly. It's also painless to manage secrets by sourcing in optional files. It also works nicely when you want files living across 2…
but many/most dotfiles reside at the top-level of your home directory, where it wouldn't be a good idea to initialize a VCS repository I totally disagree. I love having much of my home directory in git. I have a .gitiignore for the stuff I don't want in there, but the rest. Ahhhhh, so nice to be able to clone somewhere else and use.
I'm a happy follower of https://legacy-developer.atlassian.com/blog/2016/02/best-way.... Just a plain Git repository in $HOME, no other tools required. This makes it instantly portable to any machine (with git).
No need to get complicated or have dependencies - I do this with a git repo checked out and a bash script that creates all the symlinks in $HOME/
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 516
- Total comments
- 267
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-09-05 | Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfilesFirst breakout | dpeck | 149 | 69 |
| 2016-04-14 | Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles | chishaku | 4 | 0 |
| 2017-03-19 | Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles | kornish | 2 | 0 |
| 2017-04-20 | Revision-control your dotfiles with GNU Stow (2012) | ttsiodras | 1 | 0 |
| 2017-09-07 | Using GNU Stow to manage dotfiles (2013) | pmoriarty | 84 | 24 |
| 2020-12-27 | Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)Hall induction · Best thread | matthberg | 203 | 113 |
| 2022-07-27 | Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)Latest 20+ point return | marcinreal | 71 | 60 |
| 2024-01-16 | Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012) | kristianpaul | 2 | 1 |