Alternatives to yadm

Dotfile manager that wraps Git over your home directory. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.

Replacements

Listings that take over the same core job as yadm.

  • chezmoi

    Manages dotfiles across machines with templates and secret manager support.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    Chezmoi adds templates for differing machines and pulls secrets from password managers, runs on Windows as well, but introduces more concepts than yadm's plain Git approach.

  • Dotbot

    Bootstraps a dotfiles repository from a small YAML configuration.

    FreeOpen sourcemacOSLinuxCommand line

    Dotbot bootstraps dotfiles from a small YAML configuration and vendors into the repository, but it has no templating, encryption or per-host variants like yadm's alternate files.

Similar software

Related functionality, not a direct replacement.