Re: What should be the CRLF policy when win + Linux?

From: Erik Faye-Lund <kusmabite@googlemail.com>
Date: May 6, 2010, 23:25 UTC
Message-ID: <o2v40aa078e1005061625md5fede79h660a22227c4f22d1@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <w2h600158c31005061514m1fc1e75ay9096eb27d9a1a4ba@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 12:14 AM, hasen j <hasan.aljudy@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

>>>
>>> When I'm on windows, I prefer LF (unless the project already uses
>>> CRLF, or it's outside my control).
>>>
>>
>> "When I'm on windows" leads me to believe Windows is not your primary
>> operating system. If not, please excuse me.
>
> I used to be, I only moved to linux about a year ago, but I use
> windows at work, and I started using git when I was on windows.
>

OK, I'm sorry for assuming some Windows-ignorance.

Show 5 quoted lines

>> Open source isn't the only model for developing software.
>
> But it's probably the most common scenario where people run into line
> ending issues.
>

Closed source does not imply a single operating system, and you get these issues whenever you have a project with targets systems with different newline style. In my day job I develop closed source, multi-platform software, using git. So it's certainly not MY most common scenario.

And even if it were, so what? When did we start only caring for the most common case?

> If the project is a VS project, then it's probably not multi-platform,
> plus everyone at the company would be using windows anyway, so there's
> no line-ending issue.
>

Using VS on Windows does not exclude other platforms either. Either one can maintain multiple build-systems for Windows and Unix-y systems, or one can use a system like CMake that automate the job.

A typical case where you pretty much have to build using Visual Studio is when you develop a C++ library, where your Windows users use Visual Studio (due to C++' symbol-mangling you have to use the same compiler). This is not an entirely uncommon situation for open source software.

Show 12 quoted lines

>> And again... even if it were, working well together with
>> visual studio support would be very beneficial for quite a bit of
>> projects. Visual Studio is probably the most used code-editor among
>> Windows-developers (with a good margin too, I suspect), so ignoring it
>> is would just be sticking your head in the sand - or worse, asking for
>> less contributions from Windows-users (which can often be a problem in
>> the first place).
>
> The problem can be avoided with a little bit of education. VS is not a
> multiplatform IDE anyway
> Sure, it can't work with LF endings as well as notepad++, but it's not
> git's responsibility to try to fix that.

Again, using VS on Windows does not exclude other platforms. I'm not sure what you mean with "a little bit of education" here, though.

CRLF is Windows' native newline style. If git can't check out to that, it'll look like a lot less attractive solution to anybody that targets Windows compared to the competition. If it wasn't for core.autocrlf, I would have never switched myself.

Show 7 quoted lines

>
> I just don't think it's a big enough issue to be built into git.
>
> IMHO it's much better to work around the problem (if and when it
> arises) by using clean and smudge filters in .gitattributes, than
> having it built in and enabled by default in the msysgit installer.
>

But it IS built in. And it's very unlikely that this feature will ever be removed. So what's the problem with using it?

And it's a very common thing to want to do, so why make everybody who does have to jump through hoops just because YOU don't need it?

-- 
Erik "kusma" Faye-Lund