Re: [PATCH 2/2] checkout: fix attribute handling in checkout all

From: Steffen Prohaska <prohaska@zib.de>
Date: Aug 13, 2007, 07:32 UTC
Message-ID: <521D9D91-2422-4378-BD68-37550731E06A@zib.de>
In-Reply-To: <46C00515.5050308@trolltech.com>

On Aug 13, 2007, at 9:15 AM, Marius Storm-Olsen wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Steffen Prohaska said the following on 13.08.2007 08:50:
>> On Aug 13, 2007, at 8:32 AM, Marius Storm-Olsen wrote:
>>> In msysgit.git/etc/.gitattributes we have 'termcap -crlf', to  
>>> avoid  the termcaps being checked out with Windows EOL, if the  
>>> user  happens to have 'autocrlf = true'. However, when you  
>>> checkout the  working dir the first time it still has Windows EOL  
>>> due to exactly  this problem.
>> And exactly this is where I recognized the issue.
>> msysgit devs,
>> We should really make autocrlf = true the default for us and fix
>> all problems that we'll encounter. There may be more tricky stuff
>> ahead, like merges, cherry-picks, ...
>
> I'm more leaning towards having the installer give you the option  
> to choose what kind of line-endings you want Git to work with; just  
> like the Cygwin installer.

Which is the root of much trouble with Cygwin. People now say, git works perfectly in Cygwin but forget to mention that they mean Cygwin A (in binmode) but not Cygwin B (in textmode).

Better choose the right default and work hard to make the default choice work perfectly. I am strongly against an option in the installer. An option _will_ cause confusion. Better give people a hint how they can override the default for a single user, or for a single repo. Then they recognize that they move to a non-default configuration and hopefully think twice. And we never need to talk about msysgit A vs. msysgit B, but only about msysgit with repo specific or user specific options.

For me, the question comes down to the following: What would the average Windows user (real Windows user, not Linux user who was forced to work in Cygwin!) expect git to do with line endings? The answer to this question should be the default.

	Steffen