Interesting. I go about this differently. I have one master setting and from there ruby just autogenerates anything I'd ever need on other computers. If ruby is unavailable then I just copy the generated files. But I only edit the master setting to enable what I need.

> This process has served me well for at least 15 years now and is supported by a small handful of shell scripts to automate this process

I feel in a similar way but not with shell scripts. Ruby autogenerates them if I need them too. Ruby is my ultimate glue to hold together everything.