This is why i recommend not committing actual dotfiles but committing templates instead.

Yadm, a thin wrapper around git allows for alternate files, encryption and templating. See my post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19594859

https://github.com/thingfox/dotfiles

https://yadm.io/docs/encryption

https://yadm.io/docs/bootstrap

https://yadm.io/docs/alternates

There's nothing really to gain from using git directly. Yadm is awesome.

I put up my dotfiles here https://github.com/thingfox/dotfiles (sample documentation repository with examples), in it I show how I did the templating for ssh hosts amongst other configs.

This allows me to remove the most sensitive data and use the https://yadm.io/docs/encryption option for that.

The https://yadm.io/docs/bootstrap feature is also awesome as is https://yadm.io/docs/alternates