Re: [PATCH v4 0/5] Patches to avoid reporting conversion changes.

> On Tue, Jun 08, 2010 at 05:52:37PM +0200, Henrik Grubbström wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> True, there's no problem before the attribute change, but there is for
>> commits between the attribute change and when the repository got
>> normalized (which can be a while with the current git).
>
> As you say, the current git makes it easy to commit something where
> the attributes and the contents do not match. I think this needs to be
> fixed, and that your proposed patch in relaxed mode makes the problem
> _worse_, since it will then take even longer before these commits are
> fixed. But see below.
>
>>
>> Re: configuration option naming:
>>
>>   I've settled for core.normalizationPolicy, with the values
>>   'strict' (default) for the behaviour requested by you and Jonathan,
>>   and 'relaxed' for my initial behaviour.
>
> The name might be a bit vague, maybe there are other things that could
> be normalized? Maybe adding the word "index" is an improvement -
> e.g. core.indexNormalizationPolicy or just core.indexNormalization.

>
> THIS behaviour is what I find scary. In this case, "ident" is clearly
> a newly added attribute, and git should not hide this from you. If you
> add a mode where git will hide this permanently, chances are the
> repositories will never be fixed.

> The ident attribute may be a bit special since in your case it is only
> supposed to change if some other contents in the file change as well,
> but please also think how this will work with the text/eol
> attributes. Setting the text attribute and then having to CHANGE a
> file before getting it normalized is not good.
>
> Still, I think your original problem description of cloning something
> and ending up with a dirty tree is indeed an annoying problem.  So
> what about having the relaxed mode behave as follows:
>
> If both of these are true:
> - the current attributes for a file are the same as it is registered as
>   in the index with your new patch
> - a checkout of the file would result in identical contents to what is
>   currently in the working directory
> Then behave as if the file is not modified.
>
> Or, in other words: If attributes are unchanged, a file is unmodified
> not only if it would result in the same contents after being added,
> but also if it would result in the current working directory
> contents after being checked out again.