My lame dotfiles. If you're looking for good ideas, you should probably keep looking.
The idea is that there's a hidden directory called .dotfiles in home directory. All files in this directory are symlinked from your home directory using the supplied Rake task. That way your entire home directory isn't a git working tree.
To install:
git clone http://github.com/philoye/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles
rake install
This software is licensed under the MIT license.