Use git to manage home directory

Question

I'd like to create one single git repo in my Linux $HOME directory. In this repo - obviously - I could add everything under version control, but this wouldn't make any sense. I'd like to only add the files and folders that are relevant to me, like .vimrc, .vim, .bashrc, etc. (probably only hidden files and folders, but maybe not)

I know I could leverage .gitignore to try and achieve such behavior but that would be painful and virtually un-maintainable. Instead, what I'd want to know is if there'd be any way to manually declare files and folders that I would want to manage, and only that.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21266948/use-git-to-manage-home-directory

Answer 1

.gitignore

# Ignore everything
*

# But not these files...
!*.vimrc
!*.vim
!*.bashrc
!.gitignore

# etc...