How to express core.autocrlf = false with .gitattributes?

Question

This is amazing. With a gazillion posts on the Internet about core.autocrlf and .gitattributes I am still unable to figure out what to write in .gitattributes to express core.autocrlf = false

Can anyone clear the mist around it? I do not need all the fancy cases, just give me core.autocrlf = false in .gitattributes. Nothing more, but nothing less.

Ecotone

Thanks for using .gitattributes! :D – Riggs

There's actually several examples of this in git-scm.com/docs/gitattributes. – Yarmouth

Answer 1

If you don't want line ending conversion on a file, set the -text attribute. To turn off conversion on all files, set:

* -text

Note that this doesn't mean "this file isn't text" - that would be the binary attribute - it means "don't do text manipulations (line ending changes) on it".

Riggs

This is THE BEST thing you can do.... ever!!! Make it global, actually. – Gomulka

No. Don't make it global. core.autocrlf is global, and that's the problem. Different people can have different settings. Line ending changes need to be per-repository (in .gitattributes), so that every contributor agrees. – Riggs

Is there any special considerations if we also use Git LFS? – Ecotone

@Ecotone No, git-lfs should work fine with this setup. (Any files tracked by git-lfs will also set -text for good measure.) – Riggs

@EdwardThomson but line-ending mangling is bad. Text editors support whatever line ending on whatever operating system, and that's been true for a long time. – Looseleaf

@Looseleaf I never said that line ending mangling was good. Despite that, there are some tools that expect line endings in a particular format (make and cmd jump immediately to mind) – Riggs

@Looseleaf Try running a bash script that has CRLF. It's not "mangling" if it's fixing a problem. – Posticous

@AlexDresko lots of shells work with arbitrary (or even inconsistent) line endings. If bash doesn't, I personally consider that a bug. Regardless, the whole point of this question/answer is to avoid setting it globally, and allow for old (or bad, or... cantankerous) tools that require specific line endings. – Looseleaf