I have tried a custom linking script, Ansible, and stow. The best I have found is to just use a bare git repo based off of: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutori

I have tried a custom linking script, Ansible, and stow. The best I have found is to just use a bare git repo based off of: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles The idea is to make an alias that runs git so that it treats your home directory as a git repository and you can directly commit them. I would recommend bypassing that article's `config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no` setting and setting a `~/.gitignore`. This way, git will never tinker with your home directory if you accidentally run the wrong command. So the complete list of setup commands is: # Only needs to be done the first time cat >~/.gitignore<<'EOF' * !/.bashrc !/.zshrc EOF # On subsequent runs git clone --bare ssh://git/cfg.git "${HOME}/.cfg" function config() { git --git-dir="${HOME}/.cfg/" --work-tree="${HOME}" "${@}" } config checkout -- ~/.gitignore config reset ~ config checkout -- ~ config submodule update --init --recursive --remote One caveat is adding files in subdirectories (`~/. config/...`), but just requires changes in your gitignore