Storing Dotfiles on git repository using git orphan branches

So recently Neovim 0.5 version was released with in built LSP(Language Server Protocol) and Lua language support. So I modifed my init.vim with ‘coc-nvim’ to init.lua and the in built LSP.I want to save both the config files in GitHub.I googled and found that people have dot files repository where they store all the configuration files.So I decided to follow the same approach.I used the git orphan branches to store different configuration files.So they are independent of each other and can be tracked separately.

Creating a empty dotfile repository

I created the empty dotfile GitHub repository without a README.md file. Then used the below commands to create a emtpy Github repository.

git init
git commit --allow-empty
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/jithusjacob/dotfiles.git
git push -u origin main

Clone the empty repository without folder

So now the empty GitHub repository is ready. I will clone it to my new Neovim configuration folder without the dotfiles folder using the below commands

git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/jithusjacob/dotfiles.git

If there no files in the existing folder we can also used the below command

git clone https://github.com/jithusjacob/dotfiles.git .

Creating the first Orphan git branch

An orphan branch is a branch which starts with a different root commit.So it will not have any history when created and the first commit in this branch will be the root of this branch.So this branch will be a independent branch without any relation to any of the available branches.So lets create the new orphan branch using the below Commands

git checkout --orphan nvim_lsp_lua
nvim README.md
git add .
git commit -m "Initial Commit"
git push origin nvim_lsp_lua

So now if I want to clone these files I can use the below command

git clone --branch nvim_lsp_lua https://github.com/jithusjacob/dotfiles.git .

Some other commands that might be required are as below
git push -d origin <branch_name> – To delete a branch from remote
git branch -r – To list the branches
git branch – To check the current branch

Repeating the above steps for second orphan branch

So now I repeated the above steps and created a second orphan branch for my old Neovim configuration files.I now have two orphan branches independent of each other.So in future I have some other configuration files ,I will create a new orphan branch for that.

You can also see the above steps in my youtube video