Overview

Based off the thread found at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754

This relatively simple setup allows you to manage your dot files with just git and without having to resort to symlinks or some other hackery.

New Setup

1. Create your git working directory

   git init --bare ${HOME}/.config/dotfiles
   

2. Add an alias to git which will only be used for working with your dot files

   alias dotgit='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=${HOME}/.config/dotfiles/ --work-tree=${HOME}'
   

3. Ignore your .git directory to avoid headaches

   echo "${HOME}/.config/dotfiles" > ${HOME}/.gitignore
   

4. Ignore untracked files by default, this will make ‘dotgit status’ a lot less noisy

   dotgit config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
   

5. Link your repo to a remote repository for easy backups

   dotgit remote add origin <GIT_URI>
   

Importing an existing repository onto a new system

1. Add the alias to git which will only be used for working with your dot files

   alias dotgit='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=${HOME}/.config/dotfiles/ --work-tree=${HOME}'
   

2. Ignore your .git directory to avoid headaches

   echo "${HOME}/.config/dotfiles" > ${HOME}/.gitignore
   

3. Clone the repository

   git clone --bare <GIT_URI> ${HOME}/.config/dotfiles
   

4. Check out the code

   dotgit checkout
   

   WARNING: This might throw the following error if some of the files to checkout already exist:

   error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
   .bashrc
   Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
   Aborting
   

   You’ll need to delete the mentioned files and retry the check out.

5. Ignore untracked files by default, this will make ‘dotgit status’ a lot less noisy

   dotgit config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
   

Usage

Once the setup is completed you can interact with it like you would any git repository.

dotgit add .bashrc
dotgit commit -m 'adding .bashrc'
dotgit push