Re: core.autocrlf considered half-assed

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Mar 8, 2010, 19:15 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.1003082011440.14277@intel-tinevez-2-302>
In-Reply-To: <20100308185719.GQ2480@ece.pdx.edu>

Hi,

On Mon, 8 Mar 2010, Tait wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> > I do agree. It would probably have been a good idea to mark the CRLF 
> > status in the index, but we didn't...
> 
> We already have .gitattributes for tracking information about files. 
> Maybe add an attribute to describe the in-repository line endings? The 
> default would be LF, as now, and a new attribute could change the 
> checked-in format to be CRLF.

No.

The problem is not the description of the line endings in the repository. The information what line endings are used can be easily extracted from every blob, by a simple inspection.

The problem is that the core.autocrlf code blindly assumes that Unix line endings are the only thing you would ever commit. And worse, the mistake is repeated when updating the index. Git converts the DOS line endings into Unix line endings, then compares with what it has in the repository and says: "Ooops, it is different!" even if it just checked the files out.

And I demonstrated with the "html" example that even long-time Gitsters sometimes commit DOS line endings as-are, unconverted.

Ciao, Dscho