Bypassing the whole set of issues that "having a development environment remotely" introduced (isn't that just "testing" environment at that point by the way?),

Bypassing the whole set of issues that "having a development environment remotely" introduced (isn't that just "testing" environment at that point by the way?), dotfiles are inherently personal configuration files, otherwise it's just application configuration, so not dotfiles anymore. Nothing wrong with sharing dotfiles, I do that plenty myself, both sharing and using parts from others, but it's on my own accord and system-wide, not project specific. Project-specific configuration is just that, project-specific configuration, and you would not call it dotfiles anymore.