From: Stephen Bash <bash@genarts.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:51:52 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Don't search files with an unset "grep" attribute
Message-ID: <1af46e50-fdc5-47b8-af36-d070d91dd954@mail>
In-Reply-To: <20120125214625.GA4666@sigill.intra.peff.net>

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jeff King" <peff@peff.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 4:46:26 PM
> Subject: Re: [PATCH] Don't search files with an unset "grep" attribute
>
> ... snip ...
> 
> So if this was all spelled:
> 
>   $ cat .gitattributes
>   *.pdf filetype=pdf
>   $ cat .git/config
>   [filetype "pdf"]
>           binary = true
>           textconv = pdf2txt
> 
> I think it would be a no-brainer that those type attributes should
> apply to "git grep".

Looking at this purely as a user, what difference/advantage would that bring versus

  $ cat .gitattributes
  *.pdf binary=true textconv=pdf2text

or

  $ cat .gitattributes
  [attr]pdf binary=true textconv=pdf2text
  *.pdf pdf

(admittedly I have no clue if gitattributes actually supports anything like this)

I guess my point is as a user, I've gravitated to "gitattributes is about files in my repo, gitconfig is about Git's behavior" (though this is a grey area).

To partially answer my own question: one advantage of putting the filetype information in a config file is it allows system- and user-wide filetype settings.  In my personal experience I've always handled that information on a per-repository basis, but that doesn't mean everyone would want to.

Thanks,
Stephen