I'm using the same scheme for some time and it works nice. It started with simple alias as well, but then it expanded into bigger wrapper script over time. You

I'm using the same scheme for some time and it works nice. It started with simple alias as well, but then it expanded into bigger wrapper script over time. You can check it here https://github.com/marbu/dogit/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/marbu/dogit/blob/master/README.md That said, I'm not sure if it would be direclty usable for anyone other that me in it's current state. It's tailored to my use case and there are few not so well solved use cases. Few additional advantages of this approach in general: You can use local branch which is private to the machine and a public branch, Whatewer you commit ends up in the local private branch and if you would like to share it, you need to cherry pick particular commit and rebase (so that you I don't end up sharing private ssh key on github). You can use any git tool directly on your dotfiles. One can directly add vim submodules into the dotfiles repo.