I have managed my dotfiles in git for over a decade, and I have never needed anything else than git and GNU stow.

I organize dotfiles in a few modules, and then I stand in the top of the git checkout and do: "stow modulename", and it will symlink everything.

If you don't like separate dotfiles in modules/packages, you can just have one (e.g. "main").

Stow has been around since 1993 or something, so I expect to be around for a while in my distro.