This is what you need to do to get up and running with these dotFiles.

alias dotFiles='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=${HOME}/.dotFiles/ --work-tree=${HOME}'
echo ".dotFiles" >> .gitignore
git clone --bare https://github.com/zerophive/dotFiles.git $HOME/.dotFiles
dotFiles checkout

there might be some errors to correct

error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
    .bashrc
    .gitignore
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
Aborting

eventually there will be a setup or bootstrap script to archive and deal with this, for now deal with it.

Then need this to make things quiet

dotFiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

and there you go, ready to work.

Remember use dotFiles instead of git

I saw this article The best way to store your dotfiles: A bare Git repository and it spoke to me in the midst of my frustration in choosing between GNU Stow and VCSH. I liked to idea of depending on nothing and rolling my own solution and so.

Here is what I did when I set this up:

git init --bare $HOME/.dotFiles
alias dotFiles='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=${HOME}/.dotFiles/ --work-tree=${HOME}'
dotFiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

I like to add this alias with my other aliases, or if this is a new system something like

echo "alias dotFiles ='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=${HOME}/. dotFiles/ --work-tree=${HOME}'" >> $HOME/.bashrc

Also add .dotFile to .gitignore because git is git

echo ".dotFiles" >> .gitignore

now use dotFile instead of git to interact with the repo, enjoy

The Bash setup is greatly simplified and most of the good bits live in the .bash directory, .bashrc is dead stupid simple and .bash_profile is enough to go through and source the files needed for the shell. This will probably change over time, but the intent was to keep it simple to understand, modify and maintain.

Warning Mental Spew I wanted to create a new series of dotfiles for myself. As an active Tcsh user for over 20 years, I finally reached the logical conclusion:

TCSH IS DEAD

It was time to move on to a more modern shell Bash, and with that I pulled a Cortez, start from scratch with Bash and took it upon myself to formalize my configuration and commit it to git. All the cool kids are doing it and I certainly want to be "cool".