I use this method, it's great. WAY superior to and WAY easier than using symlinks and having to constantly copy/move and symlink things to a git repo. I use th

I use this method, it's great. WAY superior to and WAY easier than using symlinks and having to constantly copy/move and symlink things to a git repo. I use this script (which I modified a bit from the Atlassian one) to bootstrap it on a new $HOME dir (replace "***YOUR_GIT_REPO_ADDRESS***" with your address; also, you need to copy the function ,cfg into your .*rc file for command-line use): #!/bin/bash set -euo pipefail # the usual stuff # TODO: copy the below function into your .*rc file function ,cfg { /usr/bin/git --git-dir="$HOME/.cfg/" --work-tree="$HOME" "$@" } # TODO: replace '***YOUR_GIT_REPO_ADDRESS***' below git clone --bare git@***YOUR_GIT_REPO_ADDRESS***/.cfg "$HOME/.cfg" ,cfg config status.showUntrackedFiles no if ,cfg checkout; then # worked fine, we're done echo "Checked out config." else # it failed, so assume we need to move some files out of the way echo "Backing up pre-existing dot files." mkdir -p "$HOME/.config-backup" ,cfg checkout 2>&1 | grep -e "\s+\." | awk "{'print $1'}" | xargs -I{} mv {} "$HOME/.config-backup"/{} ,cfg checkout || (echo "Still cannot checkout configs; see messages and fix." && exit 1) echo "Checked out config." fi I also have a git alias to commit files that are tracked with a message: ctm = commit -a -u -m #commit all tracked files with message So you can do like this to commit changes and push them: ,cfg ctm "I modified my .zshrc" ,cfg push*