Sharing home and etc files with git

I would like to use git to keep revision histories of my home and etc directories. I have several computers and I like to keep their environments similar. I could see git pulls updating .bash_aliases, .bashrc, and various bash and perl scripts I create in the home directory, and updating /etc config files. Git pushes would share any recent changes to other computers. This way no matter which computer I am working on, the environment will be similar and I can make changes and know they will be copied to the others.

I haven't figured out a good way to deal with the files that have local settings in them. Using .gitignore feels a little overkill. Only certain lines of the files need to be unique. Once they are set, I'd like subsequent changes to be updated. I could cherry-pick manually but I'd like a more automated method. I have read about etckeeper, git-home-history and gibak, but they seem to be designed for backing up and versioning files on one computer and not for sharing files.

Has anyone done something similar using git or is another tool more suitable.

Thanks jimk