Discussion on: Manage Your Dotfiles Like a Superhero

[Jake Wiesler]

Great question! I can only answer from experience. There may be a more sophisticated answer.

Before setting up my .dotfiles in the way I described in this post, I had a .config directory with a few subdirectories for packages I use routinely. I don't need to version control these packages, so they aren't stowed in my .dotfiles directory.

stow realizes this, and instead of symlinking the entire .config directory, it goes one level deeper and symlinks the stowed directory. This preserves the rest of the folders in .config from being symlinked.

So what this looks like using a stowed nvim directory:

.dotfiles
    nvim
       .config
            nvim
                .dotfile
.config 
    package-1
    package-2
    nvim -> .dotfiles/nvim/.config/nvim

Hope this answers your question!