How to organize versioning and backup of system dotfiles using Git?

Over time, every developer accumulates numerous settings for their environment, code editors, terminals, and utilities, commonly referred to as dotfiles. Losing these settings during hardware replacement or system failure leads to a lengthy manual setup of the workspace from scratch.

The best way to back up and synchronize such files is to move them into a single directory and manage them using the Git version control system. The configuration files themselves remain in their original places in the home directory, and symbolic links pointing to the files inside the repository are created in their stead.

To automate the creation of symbolic links, developers use various dotfiles managers such as GNU Stow, Dotbot, or simple bash scripts. This allows you to deploy all settings on a new computer with a single repository cloning command.

Regularly committing changes when configuring new programs ensures that you always have an up-to-date backup of all configurations, which can be deployed on any other device in a matter of minutes.