Better handling of config files

[jaredmejia]

As of now, I'm seeing a lot of unnecessary changes to config files being included in commits.

43d5cd6#commitcomment-107699767

We would ideally have template config files that are pulled automatically and allow users to make necessary specifications to their local config files without these changes being tracked and without having to update the paths to config files either. Some possible ways to address this:

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/2153000 + https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/ch00/filters_a
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/9343239