This is my dotfiles structure. I am using the package dotfiles to manage those.

Most of those dotfiles work with Debian and have been tested with Debian 8.

On a new account, or a new machine, I usually do::

> mkdir ~/.dotfiles && cd ~/.dotfiles
> git clone [email protected]:marc_olivier/my-dotfiles.git my-dotfiles
> ln -sfn ~/.dotfiles/my-dotfiles/dotfilesrc ~/.dotfilesrc
> cd ~
> dotfiles -s -d

Then, I check everything is covered, ie, every file I need is symlinked to a path in the git repo::

> dotfiles -s

I also have private dotfiles repository (with more sensitive data), into which I add other kind of files with a suffix .branch_name. In this repo, each branch is related to a machine I own or a environment I need. Then, I do the following::

> cd ~/.dotfiles
> git clone [email protected]:marc_olivier/my-private-dotfiles my-private-dotfiles
> cd ~
> dotfiles -C ~/.dotfiles/my-private-dotfiles/dotfilesrc -s -d

I check nothing already taken care of is not overriden, and then::

> dotfiles -C ~/.dotfiles/my-private-dotfiles/dotfilesrc -s  # no -f option otherwise it will override global .dotfilesrc

You can rinse and repeat the previous procedure for any third-party repository you would have.

Every file is either automatically sourced or included in the PATH or in the different environment variable according to its location in the repo.