DEV Community: Tarek Nawara The latest articles on DEV Community by Tarek Nawara (@tknawara). https://dev.to/tknawara https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4095388%2Ff57b82fb-a7b9-4f8c-9975-4ba423df380e.jpg DEV Community: Tarek Nawara https://dev.to/tknawara en “I built Gripsack, a package and dotfile manager with generations and rollback” Tarek Nawara Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:15:25 +0000 https://dev.to/tknawara/i-built-gripsack-a-package-and-dotfile-manager-with-generations-and-rollback-4100 https://dev.to/tknawara/i-built-gripsack-a-package-and-dotfile-manager-with-generations-and-rollback-4100 <p>I’ve always liked the reproducibility and rollback ideas behind tools like Nix, but I wanted something simpler for managing my own development machines.</p> <p>So I built Gripsack.</p> <h2> What is Gripsack? </h2> <p>Gripsack manages your packages and dotfiles from one configuration.</p> <p>It also keeps generations, so when your setup changes, you can inspect previous states and roll back if something goes wrong.</p> <h2> Why I built it </h2> <p>I wanted a setup that was:</p> <ul> <li>easy to understand</li> <li>easy to reproduce on another machine</li> <li>able to manage both packages and dotfiles</li> <li>safe to experiment with because I could roll back</li> </ul> <p>I also wanted the configuration to feel like normal programming rather than learning a dedicated configuration language.</p> <h2> How it works </h2> <p>Gripsack has a Rust core and uses a content-addressed store to keep track of installed state.</p> <p>Each change creates a new generation, so you can move between configurations without losing the previous one.</p> <p>The project is still quite young, so there’s plenty I want to improve.</p> <h2> Try it </h2> <p><a href="https://gripsack.dev" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://gripsack.dev</a></p> <p>The project is open source, and I’d really appreciate feedback.<br> I’m especially interested in whether the configuration model feels intuitive and what package sources or features you’d like to see next.</p> showdev opensource rust