[Feature Request] Support for sharing root-level files across repositories

Hello Git developers,

Firstly, apologies if this has already been discussed or if there is a way to solve this problem that I am not aware of.

Motivation

Git submodules are very useful for sharing directories between repositories. However, in some workflows, there is a need to share a single file that must live in the repository root.

A concrete example is .pre-commit-config.yaml. I maintain a standard template across many repositories. When I add a new hook or update a version, I have to manually update the file in each repository. I could use a submodule for this, but submodules always appear in a subdirectory — not at the root where tools expect this file.

The same issue arises with other configuration files that need to reside at the top level of a project (linters, CI configs, licenses, etc.).

Proposal

It would be helpful if Git provided a way to share a file across repositories so that it appears at the root of the working tree, without requiring a separate build step, symlink, or copy operation.

I understand there are alternative approaches (subtrees, packages, external tooling), but they all involve extra indirection. Having first-class support within Git for this use case would make it much simpler and more consistent.

Thanks

Thank you for your work maintaining and evolving Git! I would greatly appreciate any feedback on whether this idea has been considered before, and if there are technical reasons it may not fit Git’s model.

Best regards, George Ogden