Dotbot (https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot) has worked extremely well for me. It’s simple to setup, has minimal dependencies, and it is also easy to run arbitrary commands if I want to get tricky with things. I would highly recommend it.
I do a similar thing, but with dotbot instead https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot
I like dotbot [0] and have been using it for a while. How do people manage secrets, I am encrypting with keybase, but really want to move away from it.
Check out dotbot[1] and the brewfile[2] plugin
1: https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot 2: https://github.com/sobolevn/dotbot-brewfile
Similar to you I keep mine in a git repository, but I use dotbot[1] to manage the symlinks to the proper paths.
I've been experimenting with dotbot [1] for the last little bit and it is similar to what is described here. The main difference being that the placement of the dot files is configured in a JSON/YAML file instead of a directly structure.
It doesn't have any external dependencies, unless you consider python an external dependency, but most all distros come with that built-in these days.
It's not a management system either. It's just a tool for describing where to copy things to. So if you simply choose not to use it later it's not that difficult to migrate.
A good starting point for versioning dotfiles is https://dotfiles.github.io/. I like to use Dotbot [1] for managing and installing my dotfiles, but there are plenty of other options listed.
Scripting out your favorite settings, here’s an example: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos
I use something similar, along with dotbot (https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot) to wire up other application’s settings files. There’s lots of good examples around to steal and tweak.