Recommend you also add "*" to your $HOME/.gitignore in this setup. Then you simply need to use `git add -f` to force-add files to your dotfiles store, so that you don't accidentally add files you don't intend to keep there.

I also do this. I would highly recommend doing it otherwise you may accidentally commit your ssh keys or other secrets.

Can confirm this works extremely well. Here's how I do it:

    git clone --bare <dotifles repo> ~/.dotfiles
    git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME checkout
    git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

And then I add an alias:

    alias cfg='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME'

Now I can just manage my dotfiles as a git repo, and I don't have to worry about accidentally adding local secrets to the repo.

Yeah, that's what I do. And I have an ever-growing .gitignore file with all the dot files and things I don't care about like ~/Downloads...

If you put * in the gitignore file you don't have to deal with ignoring the downloads directory. When you want to add a new file / directory just add the -f flag (git add -f) and everything else works as normal.