Git ignore local changes to portions of tracked files

Question

Specifically, I maintain a git repository of my dotfiles. I recently started working on a new machine and cloned my repository on the same.

Now, I wish to make some

Answer 1

As suggested by Peter you can keep those machine specific changes in a branch. Obviously you will have to be careful to strictly separate changes to those machine specific files from the "mainline". There are 2 ways for doing this:

1. Keep rebasing the branch whenever you change the mainline (this would be my preference)
2. Keep merging mainline changes into the branch (but obviously never merge in the other direction)