Re: change the filetype from binary to text after the file is commited to a git repo

From: tonka3100@gmail.com <tonka3100@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 24, 2017, 19:02 UTC
Message-ID: <7DE91669-D603-4C83-9151-78F2D5676E36@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170724181835.zo3lcv7pxmkif2jr@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Hey Jeff,

Thx for your answer.

There is no .gitattributes file in the repo. I think that the git heuristic will also detect utf-16 files as binary (in windows), so i think that is the reason why my file is binary (i have to check that tomorrow). If i add a .gitattribute file i have the problem that git diff will treat the old and the new blob as utf-8, which generate garbage.

Do you have another idea? Could it be possible to add only a space in code (utf-8) and then add the real content in a second commit, so the old and the new one are both utf-8?

Show 33 quoted lines

> Am 24.07.2017 um 20:18 schrieb Jeff King <peff@peff.net>:
> 
>> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 07:11:06AM +0200, tonka tonka wrote:
>> 
>> I have a problem with an already committed file into my repo. This git
>> repo was converted from svn to git some years ago. Last week I have
>> change some lines in a file and I saw in the diff that it is marked as
>> binary (it's a simple .cpp file). I think on the first commit it was
>> detected as an utf-16 file (on windows). But no matter what I do I
>> can't get it back to a "normal text" text file (git does not detect
>> that), but I is now only utf-8. I also replace the whole content of
>> the file with just 'a' and git say it's binary.
> 
> Git doesn't store a flag for "binary-ness" on each file (though see
> below). As the diffs are generated on the fly when you ask to compare
> two versions, so too is the determination of "is this binary".
> 
> The default heuristic looks at file size (by default, if the file is
> over 500MB it's considered binary) and whether it has any zero-byte
> characters in the first few kilobytes. But note that if _either_ side of
> a diff is considered binary, then Git won't show a text diff.
> 
> If you want a particular diff to show all content, even if it doesn't
> look like text, add "-a" to your git invocation (e.g., "git show -a").
> 
> That said, you can also use .gitattributes (see "git help attributes")
> to mark a file as binary or not-binary, skipping the heuristic check.
> I'm guessing since you converted from svn that you don't have a
> .gitattributes file, but it's possible that somebody later added one
> that marks the file as binary (and so the solution would be to drop that
> entry).
> 
> -Peff