What s the best CRLF carriage return line feed handling strategy with Git

Question

I tried committing files with CRLF-ending lines  but it failed   I spent a whole work day on my Windows computer trying different strategies and was almost drawn to stop trying to use Git and instead try Mercurial   Please share only one best practice per answer

User · Answer

Don t convert line endings  It s not the VCS s job to interpret data -- just store and version it  Every modern text editor can read both kinds of line endings anyway

User · Answer

--- UPDATE 3 ---  does not conflict with UPDATE 2   Considering the case that windows users prefer working on CRLF and linux mac users prefer working on LF on text files  Providing the answer from the perspective of a repository maintainer   For me the best strategy less problems to solve  is  keep all text files with LF inside git repo even if you are working on a windows-only project  Then give the freedom to clients to work on the line-ending style of their preference  provided that they pick a core autocrlf property value that will respect your strategy  LF on repo  while staging files for commit   Staging is what many people confuse when trying to understand how newline strategies work  It is essential to undestand the following points before picking the correct value for core autocrlf property    Adding a text file for commit  staging it  is like copying the file to another place inside  git  sub-directory with converted line-endings  depending on core autocrlf value on your client config   All this is done locally   setting core autocrlf is like providing an answer to the question  exact same question on all OS       Should git-client a  convert LF-to-CRLF when checking-out  pulling  the repo changes from the remote or b  convert CRLF-to-LF when adding a file for commit   and the possible answers  values  are   false   do none of the above    input   do only b  true   do a and and b  note that there is NO  do only a     Fortunately    git client defaults  windows  core autocrlf  true  linux mac   core autocrlf  false  will be compatible with LF-only-repo strategy  Meaning  windows clients will by default convert to CRLF when checking-out the repository and convert to LF when adding for commit  And linux clients will by default not do any conversions  This theoretically keeps your repo lf-only    Unfortunately     There might be GUI clients that do not respect the git core autocrlf value There might be people that don t use a value to respect your lf-repo strategy  E g  they use core autocrlf false and add a file with CRLF for commit    To detect ASAP non-lf text files committed by the above clients you can follow what is described on --- update 2 ---   git grep -I --files-with-matches --perl-regexp   r  HEAD  on a client compiled using  --with-libpcre flag   And here is the catch   I as a repo maintainer keep a git autocrlf input so that I can fix any wrongly committed files just by adding them again for commit  And I provide a commit text   Fixing wrongly committed files    As far as  gitattributes is concearned  I do not count on it  because there are more ui clients that do not understand it  I only use it to provide hints for text and binary files  and maybe flag some  exceptional files that should everywhere keep the same line-endings     java          text  eol   Don t do auto-detection  Treat as text  don t set any eol rule  use client s    jpg           -text       Don t do auto-detection  Treat as binary   sh            text eol lf   Don t do auto-detection  Treat as text  Checkout and add with eol lf   bat           text eol crlf   Treat as text  Checkout and add with eol crlf   Question  But why are we interested at all in newline handling strategy   Answer  To avoid a single letter change commit  appear as a 5000-line change  just because the client that performed the change auto-converted the full file from crlf to lf  or the opposite  before adding it for commit  This can be rather painful when there is a conflict resolution involved  Or it could in some cases be the cause of unreasonable conflicts     --- UPDATE 2 ---  The dafaults of git client will work in most cases  Even if you only have windows only clients  linux only clients or both  These are    windows  core autocrlf true means convert lines to CRLF on checkout and convert lines to LF when adding files  linux  core autocrlf input means don t convert lines on checkout  no need to since files are expected to be committed with LF  and convert lines to LF  if needed  when adding files   -- update3 --   Seems that this is false by default  but again it is fine    The property can be set in different scopes  I would suggest explicitly setting in the --global scope  to avoid some IDE issues described at the end   git config core autocrlf git config --global core autocrlf git config --system core autocrlf git config --local core autocrlf git config --show-origin core autocrlf   Also I would strongly discourage using on windows git config --global core autocrlf false  in case you have windows only clients  in contrast to what is proposed to git documentation  Setting to false will commit files with CRLF in the repo  But there is really no reason  You never know whether you will need to share the project with linux users  Plus it s one extra step for each client that joins the project instead of using defaults   Now for some special cases of files  e g    bat   sh  which you want them to be checked-out with LF or with CRLF you can use  gitattributes  To sum-up for me the best practice is     Make sure that every non-binary file is committed with LF on git repo  default behaviour    Use this command to make sure that no files are committed with CRLF  git grep -I --files-with-matches --perl-regexp   r  HEAD  Note  on windows clients works only through git-bash and on linux clients only if compiled using --with-libpcre in   configure    If you find any such files by executing the above command  correct them  This in involves  at least on linux     set core autocrlf input  --- update 3 --  change the file revert the change file is still shown as changed  commit it  Use only the bare minimum  gitattributes Instruct the users to set the core autocrlf described above to its default values  Do not count 100  on the presence of  gitattributes  git-clients of IDEs may ignore them or treat them differrently    As said some things can be added in git attributes     Always checkout with LF   sh            text eol lf   Always checkout with CRLF   bat           text eol crlf   I think some other safe options for  gitattributes instead of using auto-detection for binary files     -text  e g for   zip or   jpg files  Will not be treated as text  Thus no line-ending conversions will be attempted  Diff might be possible through conversion programs  text  eol  e g  for   java   html  Treated as text  but eol style preference is not set  So client setting is used   -text -diff -merge  e g for   hugefile  Not treated as text  No diff merge possible    --- PREVIOUS UPDATE ---  One painful example of a client that will commit files wrongly     netbeans 8 2  on windows   will wrongly commit all text files with CRLFs  unless you have explicitly set core autocrlf as global  This contradicts to the standard git client behaviour  and causes lots of problems later  while updating merging  This is what makes some  files appear different  although they are not  even when you revert  The same behaviour in netbeans happens even if you have added correct  gitattributes to your project   Using the following command after a commit  will at least help you detect early whether your git repo has line ending issues  git grep -I --files-with-matches --perl-regexp   r  HEAD  I have spent hours to come up with the best possible use of  gitattributes  to finally realize  that I cannot count on it  Unfortunately  as long as JGit-based editors exist  which cannot handle  gitattributes correctly   the safe solution is to force LF everywhere even on editor-level    Use the following anti-CRLF disinfectants    windows linux clients   core autocrlf input committed  gitattributes                    text auto eol lf committed  editorconfig  http   editorconfig org   which is kind of standardized format  combined with editor plugins     https   github com editorconfig  https   github com welovecoding editorconfig-netbeans

User · Answer

Try setting the core autocrlf configuration option to true  Also have a look at the core safecrlf option   Actually it sounds like core safecrlf might already be set in your repository  because  emphasis mine       If this is not the case for the current setting of core autocrlf  git will reject the file    If this is the case  then you might want to check that your text editor is configured to use line endings consistently  You will likely run into problems if a text file contains a mixture of LF and CRLF line endings   Finally  I feel that the recommendation to simply  use what you re given  and use LF terminated lines on Windows will cause more problems than it solves  Git has the above options to try to handle line endings in a sensible way  so it makes sense to use them

User · Answer

Try setting the core autocrlf configuration option to true  Also have a look at the core safecrlf option   Actually it sounds like core safecrlf might already be set in your repository  because  emphasis mine       If this is not the case for the current setting of core autocrlf  git will reject the file    If this is the case  then you might want to check that your text editor is configured to use line endings consistently  You will likely run into problems if a text file contains a mixture of LF and CRLF line endings   Finally  I feel that the recommendation to simply  use what you re given  and use LF terminated lines on Windows will cause more problems than it solves  Git has the above options to try to handle line endings in a sensible way  so it makes sense to use them

User · Answer

This is just a workaround solution   In normal cases  use the solutions that are shipped with git  These work great in most cases  Force to LF if you share the development on Windows and Unix based systems by setting  gitattributes   In my case there were  10 programmers developing a project in Windows  This project was checked in with CRLF and there was no option to force to LF   Some settings were internally written on my machine without any influence on the LF format  thus some files were globally changed to LF on each small file change   My solution   Windows-Machines  Let everything as it is  Care about nothing  since you are a default windows  lone wolf  developer and you have to handle like this   There is no other system in the wide world  is it    Unix-Machines     Add following lines to a config s  alias  section  This command lists all changed  i e  modified new  files   lc     f     git status --porcelain                  egrep -r                  a-zA-Z                       cut -c 4-      f    Convert all those changed files into dos format   unix2dos   git lc   Optionally       Create a git hook for this action to automate this process Use params and include it and modify the grep function to match only particular filenames  e g           egrep -r              txt conf          Feel free to make it even more convenient by using an additional shortcut   c2dos     f     unix2dos   git lc       f         and fire the converted stuff by typing  git c2dos

User · Answer

These are the two options for Windows and Visual Studio users that share code with Mac or Linux users  For an extended explanation  read the gitattributes manual     text auto  In your repo s  gitattributes file add       text auto   This will normalize all the files with LF line endings in the repo   And depending on your operating system  core eol setting   files in the working tree will be normalized to LF for Unix based systems or CRLF for Windows systems   This is the configuration that Microsoft  NET repos use   Example   Hello r nWorld   Will be normalized in the repo always as   Hello nWorld   On checkout  the working tree in Windows will be converted to   Hello r nWorld   On checkout  the working tree in Mac will be left as   Hello nWorld      Note  If your repo already contains files not normalized  git status will show these files as completely modified the next time you make any change on them  and it could be a pain for other users to merge their changes later  See refreshing a repository after changing line endings for more information     core autocrlf   true  If text is unspecified in the  gitattributes file  Git uses the core autocrlf configuration variable to determine if the file should be converted   For Windows users  git config --global core autocrlf true is a great option because    Files are normalized to LF line endings only when added to the repo  If there are files not normalized in the repo  this setting will not touch them  All text files are converted to CRLF line endings in the working directory    The problem with this approach is that    If you are a Windows user with autocrlf   input  you will see a bunch of files with LF line endings  Not a hazard for the rest of the team  because your commits will still be normalized with LF line endings  If you are a Windows user with core autocrlf   false  you will see a bunch of files with LF line endings and you may introduce files with CRLF line endings into the repo  Most Mac users use autocrlf   input and may get files with CRLF file endings  probably from Windows users with core autocrlf   false

User · Answer

Don t convert line endings  It s not the VCS s job to interpret data -- just store and version it  Every modern text editor can read both kinds of line endings anyway

User · Answer

Don t convert line endings  It s not the VCS s job to interpret data -- just store and version it  Every modern text editor can read both kinds of line endings anyway

User · Answer

Two alternative strategies to get consistent about line-endings in mixed environments  Microsoft   Linux   Mac     A  Global per All Repositories Setup  1  Convert all to one format  find   -type f -not -path     git    -exec dos2unix       git commit -a -m  dos2unix conversion    2  Set core autocrlf to input on Linux UNIX or true on MS Windows  repository or global   git config --global core autocrlf input   3    Optional   set core safecrlf to true  to stop  or warn  to sing   to add extra guard comparing if the reversed newline transformation would result in the same file  git config --global core safecrlf true     B  Or per Repository Setup  1  Convert all to one format  find   -type f -not -path     git    -exec dos2unix       git commit -a -m  dos2unix conversion    2  add  gitattributes file to your repository  echo    text auto   gt   gitattributes git add  gitattributes git commit -m  adding  gitattributes for unified line-ending    Don t worry about your binary files - Git should be smart enough about them     More about safecrlf autocrlf variables

User · Answer

Using core autocrlf false stopped all the files from being marked updated as soon as I checked them out in my Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2010 project  The other two members of the development team are also using Windows systems so a mixed environment didn t come into play  yet the default settings that came with the repository always marked all files as updated immediately after cloning   I guess the bottom line is to find what CRLF setting works for your environment  Especially since in many other repositories on our Linux boxes setting autocrlf   true produces better results   20  years later and we re still dealing with line ending disparities between OSes    sad

User · Answer

You almost always want autocrlf input unless you really know what you are doing   Some additional context below      It should be either core autocrlf true if you like   DOS ending or core autocrlf input if you prefer   unix-newlines  In both cases  your Git repository will   have only LF  which is the Right Thing  The only   argument for core autocrlf false was that automatic   heuristic may incorrectly detect some binary as text   and then your tile will be corrupted  So    core safecrlf option was introduced to warn a user if   a irreversable change happens  In fact  there are two   possibilities of irreversable changes -- mixed   line-ending in text file  in this normalization is   desirable  so this warning can be ignored  or    very unlikely  that Git incorrectly detected your   binary file as text  Then you need to use attributes to   tell Git that this file is binary    The above paragraph was originally pulled from a thread on gmane org  but it has since gone down

User · Answer

These are the two options for Windows and Visual Studio users that share code with Mac or Linux users  For an extended explanation  read the gitattributes manual     text auto  In your repo s  gitattributes file add       text auto   This will normalize all the files with LF line endings in the repo   And depending on your operating system  core eol setting   files in the working tree will be normalized to LF for Unix based systems or CRLF for Windows systems   This is the configuration that Microsoft  NET repos use   Example   Hello r nWorld   Will be normalized in the repo always as   Hello nWorld   On checkout  the working tree in Windows will be converted to   Hello r nWorld   On checkout  the working tree in Mac will be left as   Hello nWorld      Note  If your repo already contains files not normalized  git status will show these files as completely modified the next time you make any change on them  and it could be a pain for other users to merge their changes later  See refreshing a repository after changing line endings for more information     core autocrlf   true  If text is unspecified in the  gitattributes file  Git uses the core autocrlf configuration variable to determine if the file should be converted   For Windows users  git config --global core autocrlf true is a great option because    Files are normalized to LF line endings only when added to the repo  If there are files not normalized in the repo  this setting will not touch them  All text files are converted to CRLF line endings in the working directory    The problem with this approach is that    If you are a Windows user with autocrlf   input  you will see a bunch of files with LF line endings  Not a hazard for the rest of the team  because your commits will still be normalized with LF line endings  If you are a Windows user with core autocrlf   false  you will see a bunch of files with LF line endings and you may introduce files with CRLF line endings into the repo  Most Mac users use autocrlf   input and may get files with CRLF file endings  probably from Windows users with core autocrlf   false

User · Answer

Almost four years after asking this question  I have finally found an answer that completely satisfies me   See the details in github help s guide to Dealing with line endings      Git allows you to set the line ending properties for a   repo directly using the text attribute in the    gitattributes file  This file is committed into   the repo and overrides the core autocrlf setting    allowing you to ensure consistent behaviour for all   users regardless of their git settings    And thus     The advantage of this is that your end of line   configuration now travels with your repository and you   don t need to worry about whether or not collaborators   have the proper global settings    Here s an example of a  gitattributes file    Auto detect text files and perform LF normalization          text auto    cs     text diff csharp   java   text diff java   html   text diff html   css    text   js     text   sql    text    csproj text merge union   sln    text merge union eol crlf    docx   diff astextplain   DOCX   diff astextplain    absolute paths are ok  as are globs     postinst  text eol lf    paths that don t start with   are treated relative to the  gitattributes folder relative path   txt text eol lf   There is a convenient collection of ready to use  gitattributes files for the most popular programming languages  It s useful to get you started   Once you ve created or adjusted your  gitattributes  you should perform a once-and-for-all line endings re-normalization   Note that the GitHub Desktop app can suggest and create a  gitattributes file after you open your project s Git repo in the app  To try that  click the gear icon  in the upper right corner    Repository settings       Line endings and attributes  You will be asked to add the recommended  gitattributes and if you agree  the app will also perform a normalization of all the files in your repository   Finally  the Mind the End of Your Line article provides more background and explains how Git has evolved on the matters at hand  I consider this required reading   You ve probably got users in your team who use EGit or JGit  tools like Eclipse and TeamCity use them  to commit their changes  Then you re out of luck  as  gatinueta explained in this answer s comments      This setting will not satisfy you completely if you have people working with Egit or JGit in your team  since those tools will just ignore  gitattributes and happily check in CRLF files https   bugs eclipse org bugs show bug cgi id 342372   One trick might be to have them commit their changes in another client  say SourceTree  Our team back then preferred that tool to Eclipse s EGit for many use cases   Who said software is easy   -

User · Answer

This is just a workaround solution   In normal cases  use the solutions that are shipped with git  These work great in most cases  Force to LF if you share the development on Windows and Unix based systems by setting  gitattributes   In my case there were  10 programmers developing a project in Windows  This project was checked in with CRLF and there was no option to force to LF   Some settings were internally written on my machine without any influence on the LF format  thus some files were globally changed to LF on each small file change   My solution   Windows-Machines  Let everything as it is  Care about nothing  since you are a default windows  lone wolf  developer and you have to handle like this   There is no other system in the wide world  is it    Unix-Machines     Add following lines to a config s  alias  section  This command lists all changed  i e  modified new  files   lc     f     git status --porcelain                  egrep -r                  a-zA-Z                       cut -c 4-      f    Convert all those changed files into dos format   unix2dos   git lc   Optionally       Create a git hook for this action to automate this process Use params and include it and modify the grep function to match only particular filenames  e g           egrep -r              txt conf          Feel free to make it even more convenient by using an additional shortcut   c2dos     f     unix2dos   git lc       f         and fire the converted stuff by typing  git c2dos

User · Answer

Try setting the core autocrlf configuration option to true  Also have a look at the core safecrlf option   Actually it sounds like core safecrlf might already be set in your repository  because  emphasis mine       If this is not the case for the current setting of core autocrlf  git will reject the file    If this is the case  then you might want to check that your text editor is configured to use line endings consistently  You will likely run into problems if a text file contains a mixture of LF and CRLF line endings   Finally  I feel that the recommendation to simply  use what you re given  and use LF terminated lines on Windows will cause more problems than it solves  Git has the above options to try to handle line endings in a sensible way  so it makes sense to use them

User · Answer

Don t convert line endings  It s not the VCS s job to interpret data -- just store and version it  Every modern text editor can read both kinds of line endings anyway

User · Answer

Almost four years after asking this question  I have finally found an answer that completely satisfies me   See the details in github help s guide to Dealing with line endings      Git allows you to set the line ending properties for a   repo directly using the text attribute in the    gitattributes file  This file is committed into   the repo and overrides the core autocrlf setting    allowing you to ensure consistent behaviour for all   users regardless of their git settings    And thus     The advantage of this is that your end of line   configuration now travels with your repository and you   don t need to worry about whether or not collaborators   have the proper global settings    Here s an example of a  gitattributes file    Auto detect text files and perform LF normalization          text auto    cs     text diff csharp   java   text diff java   html   text diff html   css    text   js     text   sql    text    csproj text merge union   sln    text merge union eol crlf    docx   diff astextplain   DOCX   diff astextplain    absolute paths are ok  as are globs     postinst  text eol lf    paths that don t start with   are treated relative to the  gitattributes folder relative path   txt text eol lf   There is a convenient collection of ready to use  gitattributes files for the most popular programming languages  It s useful to get you started   Once you ve created or adjusted your  gitattributes  you should perform a once-and-for-all line endings re-normalization   Note that the GitHub Desktop app can suggest and create a  gitattributes file after you open your project s Git repo in the app  To try that  click the gear icon  in the upper right corner    Repository settings       Line endings and attributes  You will be asked to add the recommended  gitattributes and if you agree  the app will also perform a normalization of all the files in your repository   Finally  the Mind the End of Your Line article provides more background and explains how Git has evolved on the matters at hand  I consider this required reading   You ve probably got users in your team who use EGit or JGit  tools like Eclipse and TeamCity use them  to commit their changes  Then you re out of luck  as  gatinueta explained in this answer s comments      This setting will not satisfy you completely if you have people working with Egit or JGit in your team  since those tools will just ignore  gitattributes and happily check in CRLF files https   bugs eclipse org bugs show bug cgi id 342372   One trick might be to have them commit their changes in another client  say SourceTree  Our team back then preferred that tool to Eclipse s EGit for many use cases   Who said software is easy   -

User · Answer

You almost always want autocrlf input unless you really know what you are doing   Some additional context below      It should be either core autocrlf true if you like   DOS ending or core autocrlf input if you prefer   unix-newlines  In both cases  your Git repository will   have only LF  which is the Right Thing  The only   argument for core autocrlf false was that automatic   heuristic may incorrectly detect some binary as text   and then your tile will be corrupted  So    core safecrlf option was introduced to warn a user if   a irreversable change happens  In fact  there are two   possibilities of irreversable changes -- mixed   line-ending in text file  in this normalization is   desirable  so this warning can be ignored  or    very unlikely  that Git incorrectly detected your   binary file as text  Then you need to use attributes to   tell Git that this file is binary    The above paragraph was originally pulled from a thread on gmane org  but it has since gone down

User · Answer

Two alternative strategies to get consistent about line-endings in mixed environments  Microsoft   Linux   Mac     A  Global per All Repositories Setup  1  Convert all to one format  find   -type f -not -path     git    -exec dos2unix       git commit -a -m  dos2unix conversion    2  Set core autocrlf to input on Linux UNIX or true on MS Windows  repository or global   git config --global core autocrlf input   3    Optional   set core safecrlf to true  to stop  or warn  to sing   to add extra guard comparing if the reversed newline transformation would result in the same file  git config --global core safecrlf true     B  Or per Repository Setup  1  Convert all to one format  find   -type f -not -path     git    -exec dos2unix       git commit -a -m  dos2unix conversion    2  add  gitattributes file to your repository  echo    text auto   gt   gitattributes git add  gitattributes git commit -m  adding  gitattributes for unified line-ending    Don t worry about your binary files - Git should be smart enough about them     More about safecrlf autocrlf variables

User · Answer

Using core autocrlf false stopped all the files from being marked updated as soon as I checked them out in my Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2010 project  The other two members of the development team are also using Windows systems so a mixed environment didn t come into play  yet the default settings that came with the repository always marked all files as updated immediately after cloning   I guess the bottom line is to find what CRLF setting works for your environment  Especially since in many other repositories on our Linux boxes setting autocrlf   true produces better results   20  years later and we re still dealing with line ending disparities between OSes    sad

User · Answer

Try setting the core autocrlf configuration option to true  Also have a look at the core safecrlf option   Actually it sounds like core safecrlf might already be set in your repository  because  emphasis mine       If this is not the case for the current setting of core autocrlf  git will reject the file    If this is the case  then you might want to check that your text editor is configured to use line endings consistently  You will likely run into problems if a text file contains a mixture of LF and CRLF line endings   Finally  I feel that the recommendation to simply  use what you re given  and use LF terminated lines on Windows will cause more problems than it solves  Git has the above options to try to handle line endings in a sensible way  so it makes sense to use them

User · Answer

--- UPDATE 3 ---  does not conflict with UPDATE 2   Considering the case that windows users prefer working on CRLF and linux mac users prefer working on LF on text files  Providing the answer from the perspective of a repository maintainer   For me the best strategy less problems to solve  is  keep all text files with LF inside git repo even if you are working on a windows-only project  Then give the freedom to clients to work on the line-ending style of their preference  provided that they pick a core autocrlf property value that will respect your strategy  LF on repo  while staging files for commit   Staging is what many people confuse when trying to understand how newline strategies work  It is essential to undestand the following points before picking the correct value for core autocrlf property    Adding a text file for commit  staging it  is like copying the file to another place inside  git  sub-directory with converted line-endings  depending on core autocrlf value on your client config   All this is done locally   setting core autocrlf is like providing an answer to the question  exact same question on all OS       Should git-client a  convert LF-to-CRLF when checking-out  pulling  the repo changes from the remote or b  convert CRLF-to-LF when adding a file for commit   and the possible answers  values  are   false   do none of the above    input   do only b  true   do a and and b  note that there is NO  do only a     Fortunately    git client defaults  windows  core autocrlf  true  linux mac   core autocrlf  false  will be compatible with LF-only-repo strategy  Meaning  windows clients will by default convert to CRLF when checking-out the repository and convert to LF when adding for commit  And linux clients will by default not do any conversions  This theoretically keeps your repo lf-only    Unfortunately     There might be GUI clients that do not respect the git core autocrlf value There might be people that don t use a value to respect your lf-repo strategy  E g  they use core autocrlf false and add a file with CRLF for commit    To detect ASAP non-lf text files committed by the above clients you can follow what is described on --- update 2 ---   git grep -I --files-with-matches --perl-regexp   r  HEAD  on a client compiled using  --with-libpcre flag   And here is the catch   I as a repo maintainer keep a git autocrlf input so that I can fix any wrongly committed files just by adding them again for commit  And I provide a commit text   Fixing wrongly committed files    As far as  gitattributes is concearned  I do not count on it  because there are more ui clients that do not understand it  I only use it to provide hints for text and binary files  and maybe flag some  exceptional files that should everywhere keep the same line-endings     java          text  eol   Don t do auto-detection  Treat as text  don t set any eol rule  use client s    jpg           -text       Don t do auto-detection  Treat as binary   sh            text eol lf   Don t do auto-detection  Treat as text  Checkout and add with eol lf   bat           text eol crlf   Treat as text  Checkout and add with eol crlf   Question  But why are we interested at all in newline handling strategy   Answer  To avoid a single letter change commit  appear as a 5000-line change  just because the client that performed the change auto-converted the full file from crlf to lf  or the opposite  before adding it for commit  This can be rather painful when there is a conflict resolution involved  Or it could in some cases be the cause of unreasonable conflicts     --- UPDATE 2 ---  The dafaults of git client will work in most cases  Even if you only have windows only clients  linux only clients or both  These are    windows  core autocrlf true means convert lines to CRLF on checkout and convert lines to LF when adding files  linux  core autocrlf input means don t convert lines on checkout  no need to since files are expected to be committed with LF  and convert lines to LF  if needed  when adding files   -- update3 --   Seems that this is false by default  but again it is fine    The property can be set in different scopes  I would suggest explicitly setting in the --global scope  to avoid some IDE issues described at the end   git config core autocrlf git config --global core autocrlf git config --system core autocrlf git config --local core autocrlf git config --show-origin core autocrlf   Also I would strongly discourage using on windows git config --global core autocrlf false  in case you have windows only clients  in contrast to what is proposed to git documentation  Setting to false will commit files with CRLF in the repo  But there is really no reason  You never know whether you will need to share the project with linux users  Plus it s one extra step for each client that joins the project instead of using defaults   Now for some special cases of files  e g    bat   sh  which you want them to be checked-out with LF or with CRLF you can use  gitattributes  To sum-up for me the best practice is     Make sure that every non-binary file is committed with LF on git repo  default behaviour    Use this command to make sure that no files are committed with CRLF  git grep -I --files-with-matches --perl-regexp   r  HEAD  Note  on windows clients works only through git-bash and on linux clients only if compiled using --with-libpcre in   configure    If you find any such files by executing the above command  correct them  This in involves  at least on linux     set core autocrlf input  --- update 3 --  change the file revert the change file is still shown as changed  commit it  Use only the bare minimum  gitattributes Instruct the users to set the core autocrlf described above to its default values  Do not count 100  on the presence of  gitattributes  git-clients of IDEs may ignore them or treat them differrently    As said some things can be added in git attributes     Always checkout with LF   sh            text eol lf   Always checkout with CRLF   bat           text eol crlf   I think some other safe options for  gitattributes instead of using auto-detection for binary files     -text  e g for   zip or   jpg files  Will not be treated as text  Thus no line-ending conversions will be attempted  Diff might be possible through conversion programs  text  eol  e g  for   java   html  Treated as text  but eol style preference is not set  So client setting is used   -text -diff -merge  e g for   hugefile  Not treated as text  No diff merge possible    --- PREVIOUS UPDATE ---  One painful example of a client that will commit files wrongly     netbeans 8 2  on windows   will wrongly commit all text files with CRLFs  unless you have explicitly set core autocrlf as global  This contradicts to the standard git client behaviour  and causes lots of problems later  while updating merging  This is what makes some  files appear different  although they are not  even when you revert  The same behaviour in netbeans happens even if you have added correct  gitattributes to your project   Using the following command after a commit  will at least help you detect early whether your git repo has line ending issues  git grep -I --files-with-matches --perl-regexp   r  HEAD  I have spent hours to come up with the best possible use of  gitattributes  to finally realize  that I cannot count on it  Unfortunately  as long as JGit-based editors exist  which cannot handle  gitattributes correctly   the safe solution is to force LF everywhere even on editor-level    Use the following anti-CRLF disinfectants    windows linux clients   core autocrlf input committed  gitattributes                    text auto eol lf committed  editorconfig  http   editorconfig org   which is kind of standardized format  combined with editor plugins     https   github com editorconfig  https   github com welovecoding editorconfig-netbeans

[git] What's the best CRLF (carriage return, line feed) handling strategy with Git?

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