Re: [PATCH] Respect crlf attribute even if core.autocrlf has not been set

From: Eyvind Bernhardsen <eyvind-git@orakel.ntnu.no>
Date: Jul 25, 2008, 21:05 UTC
Message-ID: <42C252B2-85B9-4D05-B3A2-2A0250D7F5D6@orakel.ntnu.no>
In-Reply-To: <20080725140142.GB2925@dpotapov.dyndns.org>

On 25. juli. 2008, at 16.01, Dmitry Potapov wrote:

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> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 02:30:16PM +0200, Eyvind Bernhardsen wrote:
>>
>> Fair enough.  Did you read the rest of my email to see when I think
>> Git should mess with content?  I've thought about it, and being able
>> to do stuff like this in .gitattributes would work for me:
>>
>> * eol=auto
>> *.bat eol=crlf
>> Makefile eol=lf
>> bin/magic-binary eol=none
>>
>> I.e. "detect line endings and do CRLF->LF conversion on all files
>> except *.bat (*->CRLF), Makefile (*->LF) and bin/magic-binary (do
>> nothing)".
>
> I suppose "* eol=auto" means to convert CRLF->LF on checkin and
> LF->native on checkout?

That's the idea, yes, with "native" being configurable.

> Also, perhaps, it should be also possible to explicitly specify:
> *.txt eol=native
> which is the same as 'auto' but without guessing whether it is text
> or not.

Yes!  Good catch, that needs to be possible.

Show 7 quoted lines

>> ...but "core.autocrlf" is not versioned and applies to _all_
>> repositories, and anyone who doesn't have the correct setting can  
>> mess
>> the repository up.
>
> I think the real issue here is not as much about being or not being
> versioned, but about forcing and not forcing anything on users.

The reason I want versioning is to fix the problem of enforcing normalised line endings in repositories with checked-in CRLFs; I'm not sure how to solve it any other way, but I'm open to suggestions.

Show 5 quoted lines

> If we had core.autocrlf=input as default then clueless users will not
> checkin files with the incorrect ending. But there is an objection to
> that -- you penalize those who always have good endings. And even the
> fact that is merely default value that you can easily change to false
> does not convince everyone.

That is an excellent argument for why setting "autocrlf=true" by default on Windows was a bad idea. Thanks! :)

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> The same can be said about your
> * eol=auto
> It forces conversion on everyone, even on those who do not need it.
> Of course, you can say those projects that do not have the problem  
> with
> clueless users putting text files with incorrect end-of-lines will not
> have lines like that in their .gitattribute. Yet, if I participate in
> that project, why do I have to pay the price for this conversion just
> because someone stupid can mess up line-endings?

It's about correctness: if the repository isn't supposed to have CRs in any text files, that needs to be enforced. You might not be stupid, but that doesn't mean you won't ever take a file that was created on Windows and commit it to the repository on Linux. If the tool used to create the file was CR-damaged, there goes the repository's LF-only policy.

As you say, the reason I want the setting to be per-repository is that I don't think the cost is worthwhile for every repository. The case where it _is_ worthwhile is when the repository will be shared between Windows users and Linux users, and the Windows users want CRLFs in their working directories. I think it's worthwhile to actually make Git work right in that case.

As a side note, there's a lot of complaining about the cost of enforcing LF-only input, but I can't remember seeing any actual numbers. Is it really that bad?

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>> There's also no way of saying "this file should
>> have LF line endings, even with autocrlf=true".
>
> Actually, there is
>
> *.sh crlf=input
>
> i.e. I want my shell files to have LF even I normally use CRLF for
> all other files (on Windows).

Won't they still be converted to CRLF on checkout when autocrlf=true on Windows?

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>> One problem is that the autocrlf setting mixes "I want LF only in my
>> repositories" and "I like to have CRLFs in my working directory" into
>> one config variable.  Instead, I'd like to have a config setting that
>> specifies which line ending form I prefer: "when a text file is  
>> marked
>> eol=auto, convert LFs to CRLFs on checkout".
>
> Following your style above, I believe it should be defined as
> native-eol=crlf

Yes, that sounds right.

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> but there are people who do not want to pay any price for conversion.
> Currently, "core.autocrlf=false" means to do nothing about end-of- 
> lines,
> and even to ignore setting in .gitattributes. Should it be possible to
> disable *any* conversion on checkin and checkout? Should this be that
> value be the default, which most users use?

Well, there's no reason why Git repositories used only on Windows machines shouldn't store CRLFs, so why should all msysgit users pay the cost on every checkin _and_ checkout?

This is the reason the setting needs to be a per-repository policy and not a user configuration; users should not be able to configure away correctness, but they shouldn't be penalised unnecessarily for it, either.

-- 
Eyvind Bernhardsen