Why keep a dotfiles repository

A few days ago, I said it's been 8 years since I started my dotfiles repository and kept my configuration files in version control.

But why do this?

It makes it easy to share the same configuration across multiple computers, such as personal and work or different setups for clients.

It's also a backup of my configuration. If I need to reinstall my system or start fresh, I don't need to configure everything again manually.

If you work on a team, you can share your configuration with colleagues, find things that work well for the team, and anything that could cause issues.

I can experiment with settings and programs and then revert them again if I want to.

If I add or remove a program or change a setting, I have the Git commit log to refer to, and I can document why I made that change and what problem it solves in the message body.

I can review it in the future in case I need it again or want to re-evaluate it.

Like on other projects, capturing the why is important. The what can be seen in the diff and speaks for itself, but it doesn't explain why I made the change and won't help if I look at that commit in the future.