Dotfiles – A Survey
Presented by Neal Fultz
Dotfiles are the hidden configuration files in your home directory that are created and used by nearly every Linux program. They have been called the “secret sauce” for developer productivity and often represent years (often decades!) of accumulated wisdom. Sharing personal dotfiles via git is becoming popular on HN, Reddit, tildes, and other Linux and tech-focused communities.
By scraping and indexing several thousand git repositories, this talk presents the first large scale survey of dotfiles in the wild. We explore macro trends in dotfile usage and identify key differences between online communities (vim and emacs, for example) as well as highlight common best practices .
