Force LF eol in git repo and working copy

Question

I have a git repository hosted on github. Many of the files were initially developed on Windows, and I wasn't too careful about line endings. When I performed the initial commit, I also didn't have any git configuration in place to enforce correct line endings. The upshot is that I have a number of files with CRLF line endings in my github repository.

I'm now developing partially on Linux, and I'd like to clean up the line endings. How can I ensure the files are stored correctly with LF on github, and have LF in my working copy?

I've set up a .gitattributes file containing text eol=LF; is that correct? With that committed and pushed, can I just rm my local repo and re-clone from github to get the desired effect?

User · Answer

Starting with git 2 10  released 2016-09-03   it is not necessary to enumerate each text file separately  Git 2 10 fixed the behavior of text auto together with eol lf  Source   gitattributes file in the root of your git repository    text auto eol lf  Add and commit it  Afterwards  you can do following to steps and all files are normalized now  git rm --cached -r      Remove every file from git s index  git reset --hard        Rewrite git s index to pick up all the new line endings   Source  Answer by kenorb

User · Answer

Without a bit of information about what files are in your repository  pure source code  images  executables        it s a bit hard to answer the question     Beside this  I ll consider that you re willing to default to LF as line endings in your working directory because you re willing to make sure that text files have LF line endings in your  git repository wether you work on Windows or Linux  Indeed better safe than sorry      However  there s a better alternative  Benefit from LF line endings in your Linux workdir  CRLF line endings in your Windows workdir AND LF line endings in your repository   As you re partially working on Linux and Windows  make sure core eol is set to native and core autocrlf is set to true   Then  replace the content of your  gitattributes file with the following    text auto   This will let Git handle the automagic line endings conversion for you  on commits and checkouts  Binary files won t be altered  files detected as being text files will see the line endings converted on the fly   However  as you know the content of your repository  you may give Git a hand and help him detect text files from binary files   Provided you work on a C based image processing project  replace the content of your  gitattributes file with the following    text auto   txt text   c text   h text   jpg binary   This will make sure files which extension is c  h  or txt will be stored with LF line endings in your repo and will have native line endings in the working directory  Jpeg files won t be touched  All of the others will be benefit from the same automagic filtering as seen above   In order to get a get a deeper understanding of the inner details of all this  I d suggest you to dive into this very good post  Mind the end of your line  from Tim Clem  a Githubber   As a real world example  you can also peek at this commit where those changes to a  gitattributes file are demonstrated   UPDATE to the answer considering the following comment     I actually don t want CRLF in my Windows directories  because my Linux environment is actually a VirtualBox sharing the Windows directory   Makes sense  Thanks for the clarification  In this specific context  the  gitattributes file by itself won t be enough   Run the following commands against your repository    git config core eol lf   git config core autocrlf input   As your repository is shared between your Linux and Windows environment  this will update the local config file for both environment  core eol will make sure text files bear LF line endings on checkouts  core autocrlf will ensure potential CRLF in text files  resulting from a copy paste operation for instance  will be converted to LF in your repository   Optionally  you can help Git distinguish what is a text file by creating a  gitattributes file containing something similar to the following     Autodetect text files   text auto       Unless the name matches the following   overriding patterns    Definitively text files    txt text   c text   h text    Ensure those won t be messed up with   jpg binary   data binary   If you decided to create a  gitattributes file  commit it   Lastly  ensure git status mentions  nothing to commit  working directory clean    then perform the following operation    git checkout-index --force --all   This will recreate your files in your working directory  taking into account your config changes and the  gitattributes file and replacing any potential overlooked CRLF in your text files   Once this is done  every text file in your working directory WILL bear LF line endings and git status should still consider the workdir as clean

User · Answer

To force LF line endings for all text files, you can create .gitattributes file in top-level of your repository with the following lines (change as desired):

# Ensure all C and PHP files use LF.
*.c         eol=lf
*.php       eol=lf

which ensures that all files that Git considers to be text files have normalized (LF) line endings in the repository (normally core.eol configuration controls which one do you have by default).

Based on the new attribute settings, any text files containing CRLFs should be normalized by Git. If this won't happen automatically, you can refresh a repository manually after changing line endings, so you can re-scan and commit the working directory by the following steps (given clean working directory):

$ 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"

or as per GitHub docs:

git add . -u
git commit -m "Saving files before refreshing line endings"
git rm --cached -r . # Remove every file from Git's index.
git reset --hard # Rewrite the Git index to pick up all the new line endings.
git add . # Add all your changed files back, and prepare them for a commit.
git commit -m "Normalize all the line endings" # Commit the changes to your repository.

See also: @Charles Bailey post.

In addition, if you would like to exclude any files to not being treated as a text, unset their text attribute, e.g.

manual.pdf      -text

Or mark it explicitly as binary:

# Denote all files that are truly binary and should not be modified.
*.png binary
*.jpg binary

To see some more advanced git normalization file, check .gitattributes at Drupal core:

# Drupal git normalization
# @see https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitattributes.html
# @see https://www.drupal.org/node/1542048

# Normally these settings would be done with macro attributes for improved
# readability and easier maintenance. However macros can only be defined at the
# repository root directory. Drupal avoids making any assumptions about where it
# is installed.

# Define text file attributes.
# - Treat them as text.
# - Ensure no CRLF line-endings, neither on checkout nor on checkin.
# - Detect whitespace errors.
#   - Exposed by default in `git diff --color` on the CLI.
#   - Validate with `git diff --check`.
#   - Deny applying with `git apply --whitespace=error-all`.
#   - Fix automatically with `git apply --whitespace=fix`.

*.config  text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.css     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.dist    text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.engine  text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.html    text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=html
*.inc     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.install text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.js      text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.json    text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.lock    text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.map     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.md      text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.module  text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.php     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.po      text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.profile text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.script  text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.sh      text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.sql     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.svg     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.theme   text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2 diff=php
*.twig    text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.txt     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.xml     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2
*.yml     text eol=lf whitespace=blank-at-eol,-blank-at-eof,-space-before-tab,tab-in-indent,tabwidth=2

# Define binary file attributes.
# - Do not treat them as text.
# - Include binary diff in patches instead of "binary files differ."
*.eot     -text diff
*.exe     -text diff
*.gif     -text diff
*.gz      -text diff
*.ico     -text diff
*.jpeg    -text diff
*.jpg     -text diff
*.otf     -text diff
*.phar    -text diff
*.png     -text diff
*.svgz    -text diff
*.ttf     -text diff
*.woff    -text diff
*.woff2   -text diff

[git] Force LF eol in git repo and working copy

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