Efficient way to manage a git repository for local config files

Question

I store my config files (~/.bashrc, ~/.emacs, ~/emacs, etc.) in git. The way I configured this was simply to add a git repository in the h

Answer 1

I am using a git repo to manage the dotfiles. It contains:

1. a directory dotfiles, which contains the actual dotfiles/dotdirs I want to track.

2. a shell script, to create symbolic link of dotfiles/.* in $HOME, like

   for dotfile in dotfiles/.* ; do
     case $(basename $dotfile) in
       .)
         ;;
       ..)
         ;;
       *)
         ln -sv $(realpath dotfile) $HOME/$(basename $dotfile)
         ;;
     esac
   done
   

The script is manually runned after I add something new in dotfiles(normally by moving a dotfile into repo), or in a new and clean $HOME.

The repo can reside anywhere. I have a clone in $HOME on each host I am using.

In this way I have a much smaller and non-nested work tree, to track the dotfiles selectively.

p.s. You may want to add entries like dotfiles/.config/* to .gitignore, it contains many files I don't want to track.