Managing dotfiles with a bare Git repository

I recently came across an elegant technique for managing dotfiles using a bare Git repository. No symlinks, no extra tooling — just Git.

The original tutorial is available on Atlassian’s blog. If you’re not familiar with the difference between a bare and a non-bare repository, this Stack Overflow thread explains it well.

My own dotfiles are available at github.com/max13h/dotfiles.

How it works

The idea is to store a bare Git repository in a dedicated folder (e.g. ~/.cfg), and use a config alias to interact with it — instead of the usual git command. This avoids any conflict with other Git repositories on your machine.

Run these four lines to get started:

git init --bare $HOME/.cfg
alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME'
config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
echo "alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME'" >> $HOME/.zshrc

From there, you can track any file in your $HOME using config just like you would use git:

config add .vimrc
config commit -m "Add vimrc"
config push

That’s it.