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gitnewlineline-breakscarriage-returnline-endings

How can I stop Git from inserting carriage returns in local files?

I've been trying a lot of different configurations to try to stop Git from inserting CRs (carriage returns). I have a local file that has LF (not CRLF) line endings in the source repo:

$ cat -vT  Source/watchr.bat
echo OFF
echo ==========================================================
echo ==========================================================
echo The "watchr" command is deprecated.
echo The new command is sidekick.bat
echo " _
echo "| |
echo "| |_ _   _ _ __   ___

Note: no ^M, so there are no CRs in there.
This is one of about 80 files, so a commit will create massive needless churn in the Git history.

Now look at the output from git diff :

$ gd -R Source/watchr.bat
+echo OFF^M
+echo ==========================================================^M
+echo ==========================================================^M
+echo The "watchr" command is deprecated.^M
+echo The new command is sidekick.bat^M
+echo " _                      ^M
+echo "| |                    ^M
+echo "| |_ _   _ _ __   ___ ^M

Argh, ^M on every line. Why? How?

The settings :

$ git config --global core.autocrlf
true

$ git config  core.autocrlf
false

$ cat -vT .gitattributes
# Set default behavior to automatically normalize line endings.
* text=

Changing the settings to input (or false) and auto (.gitattributes) has no effect.
Git still wants to insert a CR into the watchr.bat file.
The .gitconfig in my home directory also has autocrlf = true.

How do I stop Git from doing this?

Platform: Git version 1.9.5.msysgit.0, Windows 7.

Solution

  • The solution to this was to eliminate .gitattributes. I had tried commenting out * text=auto in .gitattributes but that apparently wasn't "seen" by git. My coworker eliminated that file, pushed and then I pulled it and suddenly the "add a bunch of CRs everywhere" behavior went away.

    I looked for a way to get git to see the newly changed .gitattributes (the local edits I made). Couldn't find any git command that would do that, so I had to assume git would check that file anytime it did a diff. Seems that that is not the case.

    Perhaps this is a bug in git on Windows (since file watchers are dicey in Windows).