In another subthread I came up with the below, is this what you mean? I haven’t tried it yet.

• /home/user/folderApple is always empty
• /home/user/folderApple-original mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple at boot
• then /mnt/drive/folderBanana also mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple when/if it becomes available (later in the order)

Ideally I’d like to avoid a script because my experience is they aren’t very durable. I make mistakes and they are difficult to troubleshoot. So I am trying to just use the tools that are already available in the system.

But maybe there is something in the idea of using a second mount, like if

• /home/user/folderApple is always empty
• /home/user/folderApple-original mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple at boot
• then /mnt/drive/folderBanana also mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple when/if it becomes available (later in the order)

The results are the same no matter which order I do the mounts in.

don’t delete your post, people wrote things here.

You can tell hugo to build from an arbitrary directory of markdown in the config file. Then it’ll just do it’s best. I have done this experimentally on completely un-optimized obsidian vaults for just my own local use. IIRC there are some mandatory frontmatter elements that hugo requires (date, draft status, and/or title? consult the docs) which will prevent a file from appearing at all if they are missing. Depending how vigilant you are with that kind of thing you can get a more or less janky site straight away.

There are also some plugins, bash scripts etc around that will assist in this. In tidying up the files, selecting which ones to publish, mirroring to another directory etc. I have had mixed success personally, but my vaults are sprawling, badly organized and the frontmatter is often a mess which is all on me. Someone who is less/differently negligent would have different luck. I can provide some links to relevant projects if anyone is interested.

For nonidentical devices you create additional packages prefixed with specific device name. You don’t need to link all packages at once with stow, pass a name of a package to link it alone.uuu

Sooo… I find some way to share the dotfiles directory across devices (rsync, syncthing, git, nextcloud, DAV) then make specific subdirs like this?:

~
  - dotfiles
      - bash-desktop
         dot-bashrc
         dot-bash_profile
      - bash-laptop
         dot-bashrc
         dot-profile
         dot-bash_profile

But what is the software doing for me? I’m manually moving all these files and putting them together in the specific way requested. Setting the whole thing up is most of the work. Anyone who can write a script to create the structure can just as easily write it to make symlinks. I’m sure I’m missing something here.

yadm is the one I liked the best and tried it a few times. fact is that I am unlikely to keep a repo like this even part way up to date. New files are created all the time and not added, old ones don’t get updated or removed. There’s not even a good way to notice in any file manager what is included and what’s not as far as I know. yadm doesn’t work with tools like eza which can display the git status of files in repos. (and it probably wouldn’t be feasible.)

Plus I have some specific config collections already in change tracking and it makes more sense to keep it that way. Having so many unrelated files together in one project is too chaotic and distracting.

It’s not realistic for me to manage merges, modules, cherry picking, branches all that for so many files that change constantly without direct intervention. Quickly enough git will tie itself into some knot and I won’t be able to pick it apart.

I agree. Chromebooks are a viable choice for those who want a web terminal. I used one for about a year. Got the job done.