+++
title = "To publish my configs, or not, that is the question."
author = ["George M Jones"]
publishDate = 2022-11-08T00:00:00-05:00
lastmod = 2023-12-06T05:46:40-05:00
tags = ["HOWTO", "100DaysToOffload", "linux"]
categories = ["blog"]
draft = false
+++

This is a HOWTO on publishing certain Unix config files while keeping
others private using  [GNU stow](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) and ?clever? groupings of files into
directories such as `home.public.dotfies` and `home.private.mailconfig`

<!--more-->

I like to publish my personal config files (.bashrc, emacs configs,
etc) but there are some things you probably just don't want to share
because they only apply to you (your list of rss feeds) or are just
personal, and some things you should not share such as files with
passwords.

To solve this problem, I break stuff down into public,private and secret
categories.   I used to have these live under

```text
~/{public,private,secret}/*
```

but any more, I just used [GNU stow](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) which
builds symlink trees.  Now I have

```text
~/stow/home.public/dotfiles/.bashrc
```

which gets symliked into

```text
~/.bashrc
```

by doing

```text
cd ~/stow/home.public/dotfiles
stow
```

The beauty of this is that I have repos made public such as

<http://git.galthub.com:3000/gmj/home.public.dotfiles>

and others private and secret not published.
You can even mix "work" and "home" by using hierarchies such as

```text
work.private.dotfiles
```

to use different `~/.gitconfig` files.

You get the idea.   I've probably gone to far with it <http://git.galthub.com:3000/gmj/>

\#35 of #100DaysToOffload take 2.1, <https://100daystooffload.com/>