twpayne/chezmoi

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

21325 stars · 684 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

chezmoi is a CLI tool for managing personal configuration files (dotfiles) across multiple machines, written in Go and distributed as a single static binary. It supports templating for machine-specific differences, secret storage via password managers, full file encryption, and one-command bootstrap on new machines.

Use cases

• sync my dotfiles across multiple machines
• manage ~/.gitconfig and shell config files with git
• bootstrap a new machine with my configuration in one command
• keep secrets out of my dotfiles repo using a password manager
• use templates to handle config differences between macos and linux
• encrypt sensitive files in my dotfiles repository

When to choose

• you use multiple diverse machines and want consistent dotfiles
• you need templating, encryption, or password-manager integration beyond plain git or symlinks
• you want a dependency-free single binary that needs no root access
• you want to run scripts or install packages as part of applying your config

When to avoid

• you only have one machine and a simple git repo suffices
• you prefer symlink-based dotfile managers like GNU Stow
• you need a GUI for configuration management

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

configuration-management secrets-management cli developer-tools developer-tools security windows cross-platform cli go dotfiles dotfile-manager templates file-encryption password-manager-integration single-binary command-line automation linux macos

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