Instead of ignoring everything, this is how I manage my $HOME directory of dotfiles via a bare git repo.

  $ alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME'
  $ echo ".cfg" >> ~/.gitignore
  $ git clone --bare <git-repo-url> $HOME/.cfg
  $ config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

The only sticking point is when I forget to use `git add -u .` when committing changes to files which are already being tracked.

I don't remember why I went with this over the global * ignore.