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dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager
A minimal, user-friendly dotfiles backup manager
A minimal, user-friendly dotfiles backup manager that keeps your configurations safe and portable.
I kept switching between machines — work laptop, personal desktop, a random server — and every time I'd lose my shell config, my vim setup, my git aliases. The stuff that makes a machine mine.
I looked at what's out there. GNU Stow is clever but thinks in terms of symlink farms and package directories — I just want to point at ~/.zshrc and say "back this up." Chezmoi is powerful but it's a whole templating engine with state files and source directories. Yadm tries to turn your entire home directory into a git repo. Dotbot needs you to write YAML configs before it does anything.
Every tool I tried made me learn their mental model before I could do the one thing I actually wanted: keep my dotfiles safe and get them onto a new machine.
So I built dotbak. You run dotbak add ~/.zshrc, pick snapshot or symlink mode, and you're done. No templates, no YAML, no git knowledge required. One command to back up, one command to restore. It stays out of your way until you need it.
It's a bash script. It runs everywhere bash runs. It doesn't need Python, Ruby, Go, or a package manager.
That's it. Simple dotfiles manager that just works.
About dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager on Product Hunt
dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 5 upvotes and 2 comments, placing #57 on the daily leaderboard. A minimal, user-friendly dotfiles backup manager that keeps your configurations safe and portable.
On the analytics side, dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager competes within Open Source, Developer Tools and GitHub — topics that collectively have 627.5k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager?
dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager was hunted by Darshit Hedpara. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of dotbak — Simple Dotfiles Manager including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Darshit Hedpara
Why dotbak?
I kept switching between machines — work laptop, personal desktop, a random server — and every time I'd lose my shell config, my vim setup, my git aliases. The stuff that makes a machine mine.
I looked at what's out there. GNU Stow is clever but thinks in terms of symlink farms and package directories — I just want to point at ~/.zshrc and say "back this up." Chezmoi is powerful but it's a whole templating engine with state files and source directories. Yadm tries to turn your entire home directory into a git repo. Dotbot needs you to write YAML configs before it does anything.
Every tool I tried made me learn their mental model before I could do the one thing I actually wanted: keep my dotfiles safe and get them onto a new machine.
So I built dotbak. You run dotbak add ~/.zshrc, pick snapshot or symlink mode, and you're done. No templates, no YAML, no git knowledge required. One command to back up, one command to restore. It stays out of your way until you need it.
It's a bash script. It runs everywhere bash runs. It doesn't need Python, Ruby, Go, or a package manager.
That's it. Simple dotfiles manager that just works.