ayrapetovai/dfm

2026-07-25

Language: Rust

Link: https://github.com/ayrapetovai/dfm

dfm is a dotfile manager written in Rust. If you've ever set up a new machine and spent an hour symlinking your .bashrc, .vimrc, .gitconfig, and various ~/.config/* directories back into place, you know why tools in this category exist. The dotfile manager space is crowded — GNU Stow, chezmoi, yadm, dotbot, rcm — but each takes a different philosophical stance on how much magic to apply, whether to templatize, and how to handle secrets or per-host variation.

What makes this one worth a look:

Who benefits: developers who bounce between laptops, remote servers, or fresh dev containers and want a lightweight sync tool; Rust learners looking for a small, real-world CLI codebase to study; and anyone dissatisfied with the trade-offs of the incumbent dotfile managers who wants to see a fresh take before writing their own.

Worth cloning even just to skim the source — dotfile managers are the kind of project where reading someone else's approach often clarifies what you actually want from yours.

Why check it out: A dependency-free Rust dotfile manager that's small enough to read end-to-end and useful enough to actually deploy on your next fresh machine.

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