Git and Xstow. I have a small shell script that parses the xstow.ini file and creates all the directories I have listed under the [keep-dirs] directive in order to prevent it from deleting empty directories or replacing them with links.<p><pre><code>  #!&#x2F;usr&#x2F;bin&#x2F;env bash
  
  #Read the keep directories from xstow.ini
  ini=&quot;$(&lt;&#x27;xstow.ini&#x27;)&quot;
  IFS=$&#x27;\n&#x27; &amp;&amp; ini=( ${ini} )
  ini=( ${ini[*]&#x2F;\    =&#x2F;=} )  # remove tabs before =
  ini=( ${ini[*]&#x2F;=\   &#x2F;=} )   # remove tabs after =
  ini=( ${ini[*]&#x2F;\ =\ &#x2F;=} )   # remove anything with a space around =
  
  #for each keep dir make sure it exists in the home dir
  for i in ${ini[@]}
  do
        if [[ $i =~ ^\ *dir ]]
        then
                eval $i
                mkdir $dir
        fi
  done</code></pre>