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

> Steffen Prohaska said the following on 13.08.2007 09:32:
>> On Aug 13, 2007, at 9:15 AM, Marius Storm-Olsen wrote:
>>> Steffen Prohaska said the following on 13.08.2007 08:50:
>>>> 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.
>
> If we were talking about a huge amount (real) Windows users I would  
> agree with you. However, currently most of the users using Git on  
> Windows are Unix users which for some reason have to work on  
> Windows every now and then. And changing the default option to  
> autocrlf=true would be stepping on their toes, which we probably  
> don't want to do :-)

> I'm a Windows developer myself, so I naturally have autocrlf=true  
> in my global settings. I don't think having the option in the  
> installer (together with other things, like setting the global  
> username, and email for example) would be such a bad thing. The  
> problem with the way the Cygwin installer presents it is that it  
> doesn't explain the pros and cons of the two options; it just  
> recommends Linux EOL, which leads to confusion with some Windows  
> developers.

> If we properly explain the issue in the installer, and say we  
> recommend Windows EOL for Windows developers, I think it's OK. It  
> would in any case be better than the current state where you have  
> no option, or stepping on all the current msysgit/mingw-git  
> maintainers toes.