Re: [msysGit] Re: Git for Windows and line endings

From: John Szakmeister <john@szakmeister.net>
Date: Oct 19, 2012, 21:53 UTC
Message-ID: <CAEBDL5UX+bT5eSf4_QxfcOgwH0Vtco43rM78HKUJTr75uUXhFA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CADKp0pxuFsSEeZoeemyaqhSJEcsjj1arEOsF4Ub8=76y7tkwHg@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Chris B <chris.blaszczynski@gmail.com> wrote: [snip]

> - Windows has been able to cope with UNIX line endings a long time; no
> developer is using a default Notepad to open files with high
> expectations. Any Windows development tool and editor worth anything
> I've used is able to handle both just fine.

That's simply not a true, across the board statement. I really wish it was, because I find the issue troublesome as well. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of applications that don't cope with mixed line endings very well. We have a backend that targets several platforms, and the Windows toolchain is quite keen on having CRLF endings, but we like LF under Linux, and others.

I also wish that no developers were using Notepad either. Any time I've run across it, I've tried to point folks at much more capable environments... but that only has moderate success. Of course, it's even worse these days because Notepad puts a BOM at the front of the file, making Git think it's a binary file.

One thing I do wish is that I didn't have to do the song and dance to convert all the files when I set gitattributes:

    $ echo "* text=auto" >>.gitattributes
    $ rm .git/index     # Remove the index to force git to
    $ git reset         # re-scan the working directory
    $ git status        # Show files that will be normalized
    $ git add -u
    $ git add .gitattributes
    $ git commit -m "Introduce end-of-line normalization"

One thing that I like about Subversion was that when you set svn:eol-style, it took.

-John