Re: idea to tweak wording of CRLF warning

From: Torsten Bögershausen <tboegi@web.de>
Date: Apr 26, 2021, 20:55 UTC
Message-ID: <20210426205510.snoqwdipq47fkhbb@tb-raspi4>
In-Reply-To: <AM6PR01MB4166BC567911A05016DE2918F9429@AM6PR01MB4166.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com>

On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 05:31:53PM +0000, mark.yagnatinsky@barclays.com wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> If I'm on Windows and I "git add" a file with LF line endings, I get the following misleading warning:
>
> warning: LF will be replaced by CRLF in t.txt
>
> This makes me think something is about to happen "now" but actually the warning is about what will happen "later".
> In particular, the file will be committed with LF, but git may convert to CRLF when it comes time to check out the file.
> Thus, I propose to add the words "on checkout" somewhere in the warning message, to emphasize that the conversion will occur later instead of now.
> E.g., "warning, LF will be replaced by CRLF on next checkout of t.txt" or something along those lines.
>
> This suggestion was inspired by the amazingly detailed answer to my question on Stack overflow, without which I would have been badly confused:
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67199433/git-line-endings-behavior-does-not-match-documentation
>

Thanks for posting here.

I think/hope that a couple of answers given on stackoverflow could have digged out from here (or may be they where ?)

About the gitattributes: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitattributes

Out of curiosity, please allow a question: Is that material too hard to understand, or too hard do find ? Or does it take too much time to read ?

Back to the confusing message. It is confusing even to me.

... I like that message suggestion. You might consider offering it to the Git mailing list as a patch to Git ...

It may be, that someone sends a patch. However, as a very first step: "or something along those lines." needs to be defined.

Which short text would have explained the whole story better ?

The attributes with "* text=auto" means different things: Files with CRLF in the working tree will get LF in the index, when they are commited/added.

git checkout t.txt (which has LF) in your scenario will not checkout the file with CRLF rigth now. It is is not changed in the index.

A checkout will only change the working tree if you checkout t.txt with different content - checkout a different branch, switch to a tag, or checkout a commit id.

Or if you delete it in the working tree, and check it out again.

In that sense: Suggestions (the complete new text) of the warning message are welcome.