Further refinements on this front: I use Dropbox Selective Sync (SS) to prevent the .git file from being shared. I alluded to this above, but here are all the steps now that I’ve done this a few times:
- In
project-repo-dropbox, temporarily rename.gitto something like.git2 - Then create a directory with
mkdir .git - Go to Dropbox UI on your client and under
Preferences > Account > Selective Sync, navigate toproject-repo-dropboxand unselect the .git folder. This will remove the.gitfolder from the directory on your computer. - Go back to
project-repo-dropboxin the command line and rename.git2to.git - In the Dropbox web interface, navigate to
project-repo-dropboxand delete the.gitfolder there.
Yes, this is a lot of hoops to jump through, but basically none of it is visible/relevant to your dropbox collaborators.
Other git users can now do the same thing and have whatever folder structure they want without everyone’s .git files borking each other.
If multiple dropbox users are using RStudio, though you may want to advise them to use Selective Sync on the .Rproj.user directory (as suggested in the RStudio docs).
(Interestingly RStudio Server Pro, which has shared project support, splits up the .Rproj.user stuff into separate user folders to prevent conflicts and allow the users to each save different IDE states.)