Re: Bug report: .gitattributes: -diff Unset causes files to be reported as binaries

From: Frans Englich <fenglich@fastmail.fm>
Date: Jul 2, 2009, 08:14 UTC
Message-ID: <200907021014.06540.fenglich@fastmail.fm>
In-Reply-To: <20090702053534.GA13255@sigio.peff.net>

On Thursday 02 July 2009 07:35:34 Jeff King wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 12:08:35PM +0200, Frans Englich wrote:
> > Applying -diff Unset to a file using .gittattributes causes "git diff"
> > to state that the file is a binary even though it isn't, or have been
> > instructed to be treated as one. See attached script for reproducing.
>
> I think you are a little confused by the syntax. Each line of the
> gitattributes file has a filename pattern and a set of attributes. Each
> attribute is either set, unset, set to a value, or unspecified. For your
> example (file.txt and the "diff" attribute), they look like:

Perhaps that should be considered another bug; that invalid syntax is accepted, instead of being communicated to the user.

[...]

> So as far as I can see, git is behaving exactly as it is supposed to.
> Maybe you can be more specific about what effect you were trying to
> achieve by setting gitattributes in the first place?

To exclude it in diffs, such as from `git show`. Take the case where you have a grammar file for a parser and generate a source file from it(or any similar scenario); the diff for the generated source file is not of interest and is just noisy when read as part of a patch. This applies to all kinds of generated files. However, this doesn't mean that the file should be treated as a binary, and what practicalities that implies.

If -diff affects whether a file is treated as a binary, as opposed whether it's diff'ed, it would imo make sense to call it -binary.

Cheers,

		Frans