Starting from scratch

If you haven't been tracking your configurations in a Git repository before, you can start using this technique easily with these lines:

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

• The first line creates a folder ~/.dotfiles which is a Git bare repository that will track our files.
• Then we create an alias config which we will use instead of the regular git when we want to interact with our configuration repository.
• We set a flag - local to the repository - to hide files we are not explicitly tracking yet. This is so that when you type config status and other commands later, files you are not interested in tracking will not show up as untracked.
• Also you can add the alias definition by hand to your .zshrc or use the the fourth line provided for convenience. If you are not using zsh, then add the alias to your .bashrc.

After you've executed the setup any file within the $HOME folder can be versioned with normal commands, replacing git with your newly created config alias, like:

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