Re:Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)
by j1elo on Friday July 29, 2022 @08:46AM
(#32276163)
Problem is, this still makes sense in some cases but doesn't in others, and stow, as it is, doesn't care about the distinction.
For example, on a machine where ~/.config/autostart/ doesn't still exist, I do not want that either ~/.config or ~/.config/autostart are created as symlinks to my stowed package; otherwise any newly installed file, from unrelated apps, would end up in my package! I just want this path to exist as a proper dir, and only contain whatever symlinks are needed from stow. Thus an `mkdir -p` is still needed before running stow.
On the other hand, I do want that ~/.config/wireshark/ is a symlink to the stow repository. So no mkdir in this case.
Regardless, having a script that adds extra per-package pre-process/post-process logic before/after running stow is still needed, anyway.
I don't blame you for not knowing about this flag. Here's its description in the manpage:
> Disable folding of newly stowed directories when stowing, and refolding of newly foldable directories when unstowing.
This is confusing because it's a circular definition. It doesn't explain what "folding" means. It should just read, "prevents creation of symlinked directories" or something.