I have been using the "bare git at $HOMEDIR"[0] approach for several years.

Benefits:

1. no extra tools.

2. one off task for setting up the git repo and alias `dotfiles='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=${HOME}/.config/dotfiles --work-tree=${HOME}'`

3. all files are where they are, no symlinks, copies, etc.

Caveats:

1. $HOME/.gitignore just ignores everything because it contains a single "*" char[1]. So adding new files must be done with dotfiles add -f ~/.newfile to track.

Refs:

[0] - https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles [1] - https://github.com/nrvnrvn/dotfiles/blob/main/.gitignore