What is the correct core.autocrlf setting I should use?

Question

Theoretically it is said that when working in a windows machine, people should use core.autocrlf set to true.

My windows machine git config settings is core.autocrlf=true

However when I clone a gitlab repository I can see that some sh files have their lines finished in \r.

(I do that by doing cat -A thefile.sh).

This originates all kinds of problems when I copy these files to a linux environment and try to run them.

For reference I cloned the same gitlab repo in a linux machine (where that configuration is not set) and the sh files have no \r in them.

My question is, how can I fix this?

Will setting the core.autocrlf to input and cloning again the repo will help? When did these \r get introduced?

VonC · Answer 1 · 2021-07-06T05:53:04.523

What is the correct core.autocrlf setting I should use?

Simple: false.

core.autocrlf applies to all files (including binaries) and can corrupt them on checkout.
Even core.safecrlf is too encompassing.

I prefer using .gitattributes eol directives, where you specify exactly what you need for each file.

Plus:

git config is local, and not versioned: you would rely on other developers to make the exact same "correct" configuration;
.gitattributes is versioned: other developers will benefit from it automatically;
core.autocrlf would override any .gitattributes carefully set directives.

So in your case, in a .gitattributes file:

*.sh         eol=lf

Note:

have their lines finished in \r

I suspect rather: \r\n not \r (see Newline representation)

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