dotfiles is a colleciton of my dotfiles which are intended to be used from a bare git repository.
From the Git manual:
a repository that doesn’t contain a working directory.
This means that there is no requirement to git clone into $HOME; the .git directory can live anywhere while the actual repository files can exist in $HOME.
For example, if its desired that the .git directory live in $HOME/.dotfiles then this becomes the git command when interacting with the bare repository:
git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME
In order to clone this repo:
git clone --bare git@github.com:aosterhage/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles/
and then the repo files can be checked-out via the above mentioned git options:
git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME checkout main
It will probably be desired that untracked files are not shown by default because plenty of files and directories will live in $HOME that should not be committed:
git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no