Other than just using a dotfile repo with no additional tooling, just updating a git repository which you sync to github, and then manually copying what you’re currently using into the correct paths, the the two intermediate ‘styles’ of dotfile management are:

• a bare git repo, what yadm automates (what I currently use)
• a symlink farm, like stow

I currently use yadm. The tradeoff is (unlike stow) you don’t have to keep track of multiple copies/symlinks, but it does mean you have to maintain a huge gitignore to ignore all files you don’t want to commit.