cowboy/dotfiles

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

1608 stars · 470 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A personal dotfiles management tool by Ben Alman that bootstraps Ubuntu and macOS machines with a single command. It clones the repo, copies and symlinks config files into the home directory, and runs OS-appropriate init scripts to install common tools.

Use cases

• bootstrap a new mac or ubuntu machine with my shell setup
• manage bashrc and shell configs across multiple machines
• symlink dotfiles from a git repo into my home directory
• keep dotfiles in sync between computers
• automate installing my usual tools on a fresh system
• back up existing config files before overwriting them

When to choose

• you use bash on Ubuntu or macOS and want a simple, script-based dotfiles setup
• you want a single command to bootstrap and re-sync a machine
• you prefer copy/symlink/init conventions over a framework

When to avoid

• you use zsh/fish or Windows as your primary environment
• you want a actively developed tool with recent releases
• you need a declarative or cross-platform dotfiles manager like chezmoi or nix

Facets

cli-tool · maturity maintenance

developer-tools configuration-management cli file-system developer-tools operating-systems cli dotfiles bash system-bootstrap symlink-management shell-configuration command-line automation linux macos shell

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="cowboy/dotfiles")