Several months ago, I became pretty interested in the idea of a unified computer setup. Between my home computers and work computers, it began weighing on me mentally to have to switch contexts all the time. I'd forget which machine had `wget`, which `fish` functions were installed on which host, etc. The most tedious thing was the process of setting up a new computer: painstakingly finding each and every little configuration I had on my other machines, and copying them over. I'd spend half a day just setting up a new machine. I wanted something better.

I first tried Ira's [mackup](https://github.com/lra/mackup), which syncs files to Dropbox. Its catch-all approach scared me, though, as it backs up `fish` history by default. I decided to move to something different.

I ended up basing my dotfiles setup on the GNU [stow](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) utility. Here's how it works:

- In `~`, I have a git-managed directory `dotfiles`

- For every new app I use, I make a new directory in `dotfiles`. For example, `vim`, `fish`, etc.

- I run `stow` on all these directories, and it symlinks everything into place

I ended up rolling my own update script, but it's pretty trivial. I also made heavy use of Homebrew brewfiles, which can be used to define what commands you would like to run through Homebrew. I also use [Homebrew Cask](http://caskroom.io/) to install apps.

In the end, I now have the exact same configuration on all my machines. For work, I have a separate branch, which has other fish functions / utilities. I recently got a new computer, and I ran the `update.sh` script while I went to lunch. When I came back, my machine was ready to go.

Take a look at my setup [here](https://github.com/peterhajas/dotfiles).