How to manage your dotfiles with git

Based on a Hacker News solution proposed by StreakyCobra

In his own words, some advantages of this approach are:

No extra tooling, no symlinks, files are tracked on a version control system, you can use different branches for different computers, you can replicate you configuration easily on new installation.

Getting started

If you're starting from scratch, go ahead and…

• create a .dotfiles folder, which we'll use to track your dotfiles

git init --bare $HOME/.dotfiles

• create an alias dotfilesso you don't need to type it all over again

alias dotfiles='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

• set git status to hide untracked files

dotfiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

• add the alias to .bashrc (or .zshrc) so you can use it later

echo "alias dotfiles='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'" >> $HOME/.bashrc

Usage

Now you can use regular git commands such as:

dotfiles status
dotfiles add .vimrc
dotfiles commit -m "Add vimrc"
dotfiles add .bashrc
dotfiles commit -m "Add…