Git replacing LF with CRLF

Question

On a Windows machine, I added some files using git add. I got warnings saying:

LF will be replaced by CRLF

What are the ramifications of this conversion?

Answer 1

These messages are due to an incorrect default value of core.autocrlf on Windows.

The concept of autocrlf is to handle line endings conversions transparently. And it does!

Bad news: the value needs to be configured manually.

Good news: it should only be done one time per Git installation (per project setting is also possible).

How autocrlf works:

core.autocrlf=true:      core.autocrlf=input:     core.autocrlf=false:

     repository               repository               repository
      ^      V                 ^      V                 ^      V
     /        \               /        \               /        \
crlf->lf    lf->crlf     crlf->lf       \             /          \
   /            \           /            \           /            \

Here crlf = win-style end-of-line marker, lf = unix-style (also used on Mac since Mac OS X).

(pre-osx cr is not affected for any of three options above.)

When does this warning show up (under Windows)?

    – autocrlf = true if you have unix-style lf in one of your files (= RARELY),
    – autocrlf = input if you have win-style crlf in one of your files (= almost ALWAYS),
    – autocrlf = false – NEVER!

What does this warning mean?

The warning "LF will be replaced by CRLF" says that you (having autocrlf=true) will lose your unix-style LF after commit-checkout cycle (it will be replaced by windows-style CRLF). Git doesn't expect you to use unix-style LF under Windows.

The warning "CRLF will be replaced by LF" says that you (having autocrlf=input) will lose your windows-style CRLF after a commit-checkout cycle (it will be replaced by unix-style LF). Don't use input under Windows.

Yet another way to show how autocrlf works

1) true:             x -> LF -> CRLF
2) input:            x -> LF -> LF
3) false:            x -> x -> x

where x is either CRLF (windows-style) or LF (unix-style) and arrows stand for

file to commit -> repository -> checked out file

How to fix

The default value for core.autocrlf is selected during Git installation and stored in system-wide gitconfig (%ProgramFiles(x86)%\git\etc\gitconfig on Windows, /etc/gitconfig on Linux). Also there're (cascading in the following order):

   – "global" (per-user) gitconfig located at ~/.gitconfig, yet another
   – "global" (per-user) gitconfig at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config or $HOME/.config/git/config and
   – "local" (per-repo) gitconfig at .git/config in the working directory.

So, write git config core.autocrlf in the working directory to check the currently used value and

   – git config --system core.autocrlf false            # per-system solution
   – git config --global core.autocrlf false            # per-user solution
   – git config --local core.autocrlf false              # per-project solution

Warnings

    – git config settings can be overridden by gitattributes settings.
    – crlf -> lf conversion only happens when adding new files, crlf files already existing in the repo aren't affected.

Moral (for Windows):

    - use core.autocrlf = true if you plan to use this project under Unix as well (and unwilling to configure your editor/IDE to use unix line endings),
    - use core.autocrlf = false if you plan to use this project under Windows only (or you have configured your editor/IDE to use unix line endings),
    - never use core.autocrlf = input unless you have a good reason to (eg if you're using unix utilities under Windows or if you run into makefiles issues),

PS What to choose when installing Git for Windows?

If you're not going to use any of your projects under Unix, don't agree with the default first option. Choose the third one (Checkout as-is, commit as-is). You won't see this message. Ever.

PPS: My personal preference is configuring the editor/IDE to use unix-style endings, and setting core.autocrlf to false.

Update(2022)

Since 2018, git can --renormalize repo fixing the existing line endings as required.

Answer 2

Git has three modes of how it treats line endings:

# This command will print "true" or "false" or "input"
git config core.autocrlf

You can set the mode to use by adding an additional parameter of true or false to the above command line.

If core.autocrlf is set to true, that means that any time you add a file to the Git repository that Git thinks is a text file, it will turn all CRLF line endings to just LF before it stores it in the commit. Whenever you git checkout something, all text files automatically will have their LF line endings converted to CRLF endings. This allows development of a project across platforms that use different line-ending styles without commits being very noisy, because each editor changes the line ending style as the line ending style is always consistently LF.

The side effect of this convenient conversion, and this is what the warning you're seeing is about, is that if a text file you authored originally had LF endings instead of CRLF, it will be stored with LF as usual, but when checked out later it will have CRLF endings. For normal text files this is usually just fine. The warning is a "for your information" in this case, but in case Git incorrectly assesses a binary file to be a text file, it is an important warning, because Git would then be corrupting your binary file.

If core.autocrlf is set to false, no line-ending conversion is ever performed, so text files are checked in as-is. This usually works ok, as long as all your developers are either on Linux or all on Windows. But in my experience I still tend to get text files with mixed line endings that end up causing problems.

My personal preference is to leave the setting turned ON, as a Windows developer.

See git-config for updated information that includes the "input" value.

Answer 3

If you already have checked out the code, the files are already indexed. After changing your Git settings, say by running:

git config --global core.autocrlf input

You should refresh the indexes with

git rm --cached -r .

And rewrite the Git index with

git reset --hard

Note: this will remove your local changes. Consider stashing them before you do this.

---

Source: Configuring Git to Handle Line Endings

Answer 4

git config core.autocrlf false

Answer 5

Both unix2dos and dos2unix is available on Windows with Git Bash. You can use the following command to perform UNIX (LF) → DOS (CRLF) conversion. Hence, you will not get the warning.

unix2dos filename

or

dos2unix -D filename

But, don't run this command on any existing CRLF file, because then you will get empty newlines every second line.

dos2unix -D filename will not work with every operating system. Please check this link for compatibility.

If for some reason you need to force the command then use --force. If it says invalid then use -f.

Answer 6

A GitHub article on line endings is commonly mentioned when talking about this topic.

My personal experience with using the often recommended core.autocrlf configuration setting was very mixed.

I'm using Windows with Cygwin, dealing with both Windows and Unix projects at different times. Even my Windows projects sometimes use Bash shell scripts, which require Unix (LF) line endings.

Using GitHub's recommended core.autocrlf setting for Windows, if I check out a Unix project (which does work perfectly on Cygwin - or maybe I'm contributing to a project that I use on my Linux server), the text files are checked out with Windows (CRLF) line endings, creating problems.

Basically, for a mixed environment like I have, setting the global core.autocrlf to any of the options will not work well in some cases. This option might be set on a local (repository) Git configuration, but even that wouldn't be good enough for a project that contains both Windows- and Unix-related stuff (e.g., I have a Windows project with some Bash utility scripts).

The best choice I've found is to create per-repository .gitattributes files. The GitHub article mentions it.

Example from that article:

# Set the default behavior, in case people don't have core.autocrlf set.
* text=auto

# Explicitly declare text files you want to always be normalized and converted
# to native line endings on checkout.
*.c text
*.h text

# Declare files that will always have CRLF line endings on checkout.
*.sln text eol=crlf

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

In one of my project's repository:

* text=auto

*.txt         text eol=lf
*.xml         text eol=lf
*.json        text eol=lf
*.properties  text eol=lf
*.conf        text eol=lf

*.awk  text eol=lf
*.sed  text eol=lf
*.sh   text eol=lf

*.png  binary
*.jpg  binary

*.p12  binary

It's a bit more things to set up, but do it once per project, and any contributor on any OS should have no troubles with line endings when working with this project.

Answer 7

I think Basiloungas's answer is close, but out of date (at least on Mac).

Open the ~/.gitconfig file and set safecrlf to false:

[core]
       autocrlf = input
       safecrlf = false

That *will make it ignore the end of line char apparently (it worked for me, anyway).

Answer 8

In Vim, open the file (e.g.: :e YOURFILEENTER), then

:set noendofline binary
:wq

Answer 9

I had this problem too.

SVN doesn't do any line ending conversion, so files are committed with CRLF line endings intact. If you then use git-svn to put the project into git then the CRLF endings persist across into the git repository, which is not the state git expects to find itself in - the default being to only have unix/linux (LF) line endings checked in.

When you then check out the files on windows, the autocrlf conversion leaves the files intact (as they already have the correct endings for the current platform), however the process that decides whether there is a difference with the checked in files performs the reverse conversion before comparing, resulting in comparing what it thinks is an LF in the checked out file with an unexpected CRLF in the repository.

As far as I can see your choices are:

1. Re-import your code into a new git repository without using git-svn, this will mean line endings are converted in the intial git commit --all
2. Set autocrlf to false, and ignore the fact that the line endings are not in git's preferred style
3. Check out your files with autocrlf off, fix all the line endings, check everything back in, and turn it back on again.
4. Rewrite your repository's history so that the original commit no longer contains the CRLF that git wasn't expecting. (The usual caveats about history rewriting apply)

---

Footnote: if you choose option #2 then my experience is that some of the ancillary tools (rebase, patch etc) do not cope with CRLF files and you will end up sooner or later with files with a mix of CRLF and LF (inconsistent line endings). I know of no way of getting the best of both.

Answer 10

Most of the tools in Windows also accepts a simple LF in text files. For example, you can control the behaviour for Visual Studio in a file named '.editorconfig' with following example content (part):

 indent_style = space
 indent_size = 2
 end_of_line = lf    <<====
 charset = utf-8

Only the original Windows Notepad does not work with LF, but there are some more proper simple editor tools available!

Hence you should use LF in text files in Windows too. This is my message, and it is strongly recommended! There isn’t any reason to use CRLF in windows!

(The same discussion is using \ in include paths in C/++. It is bovine fecal matter. Use #include <pathTo/myheader.h> with slash!, It is the C/++ standard and all Microsoft compilers support it).

Hence the proper setting for Git is:

git config core.autocrlf false

My message: Forget such old thinking programs as dos2unix and unix2dos. Clarify in your team that LF is proper to use under Windows.

Answer 11

Removing the below from the ~/.gitattributes file,

* text=auto

will prevent Git from checking line-endings in the first place.

Answer 12

How to make Git ignore different line endings

http://www.rtuin.nl/2013/02/how-to-make-git-ignore-different-line-endings/ (Not working)

You can disable the CRLF behaviour completely, or per filetype by changing entries in your .gitattributes file. In my case, I put this:

• -crlf This tells Git to ignore the line endings for all files. And does not change the files in your working directory. Even if you have the core.autocrlf set to true, false, or input.

echo "* -crlf" > .gitattributes

Do this on a separate commit or Git might still see whole files as modified when you make a single change (depending on if you have changed the autocrlf option).

This one really works. Git will respect the line endings in mixed line ending projects and not warn you about them.

Answer 13

I don't know much about Git on Windows, but...

It appears to me that Git is converting the return format to match that of the running platform (Windows). CRLF is the default return format on Windows, while LF is the default return format for most other OSes.

Chances are, the return format will be adjusted properly when the code is moved to another system. I also reckon Git is smart enough to keep binary files intact rather than trying to convert LFs to CRLFs in, say, JPEG files.

In summary, you probably don't need to fret too much over this conversion. However, if you go to archive your project as a tarball, fellow coders would probably appreciate having LF line terminators rather than CRLF. Depending on how much you care (and depending on you not using Notepad), you might want to set Git to use LF returns if you can :)

Appendix: CR is ASCII code 13, LF is ASCII code 10. Thus, CRLF is two bytes, while LF is one.

Answer 14

It should read:

warning: (If you check it out/or clone to another folder with your current core.autocrlf being true,)LF will be replaced by CRLF

The file will have its original line endings in your (current) working directory.

This picture should explain what it means.

Answer 15

Make sure that you have installed the latest version of Git

I did as in a previous answer, git config core.autocrlf false, when using Git (version 2.7.1), but it did not work.

Then it works now when upgrading git (from 2.7.1 to 2.20.1).

Answer 16

1. Open the file in Notepad++.
2. Go to menu Edit → EOL Conversion.
3. Click on the Windows Format.
4. Save the file.

Answer 17

The OP's question is Windows-related and I could not use others without going to the directory or even running file in Notepad++ as administrator did not work...

So had to go this route:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\etc"
git config --global core.autocrlf false

Answer 18

CRLF could cause some problem while using your "code" in two different OSes (Linux and Windows).

My Python script was written in a Linux Docker container and then pushed using Windows' Git Bash. It gave me the warning that LF will be replaced by CRLF. I didn't give it much thought, but then when I started the script later, it said:

/usr/bin/env: 'python\r': No such file or directory

Now that is an \r for ramification for you. Windows uses "CR" - carriage return - on top of '\n' as new line character - \n\r. That's something you might have to consider.

Answer 19

Other answers are fantastic for the general concept. I ran into a problem where after updating the warning still happened on existing repositories which had commits in previous setting.

Adding with --renormalize helped, e.g.,

git add --renormalize .

From the documentation:

" Apply the "clean" process freshly to all tracked files to forcibly add them again to the index. This is useful after changing core.autocrlf configuration or the text attribute in order to correct files added with wrong CRLF/LF line endings. This option implies -u."

Answer 20

I just had the same error. It happened after installing NVM NVM on Windows 10.

Setting the autoclrf in all levels did not worked.

In CMD I used: “git ls-files --eol”

i/lf    w/crlf  attr/             src/components/quotes/ExQuoteForm.js
i/lf    w/lf    attr/             src/components/quotes/HighlightedQuote.js

Conclusion:

Files I made have the different ending.

To change the files and reset, do

git config core.autocrlf false
git rm --cached -r .
git reset --hard

Although:

In some projects I needed to delete the repository and start it fresh.

Answer 21

Many text editors allow you to change to LF. See the Atom instructions below. It is simple and explicit.

---

Click CRLF on the bottom right:

Select LF in dropdown on top:

Answer 22

In a GNU/Linux shell prompt, the dos2unix and unix2dos commands allow you to easily convert/format your files coming from MS Windows.

Answer 23

CR and LF are a special set of characters that helps format our code.

CR (\r) puts the cursor at the beginning of a line but doesn't create a new line. This was how legacy versions of macOS (not-applicable today) works.

LF (\n) creates a new line, but it doesn't put the cursor at the beginning of that line. The cursor stays back at the end of the last line. This is how Unix (which includes macOS) and Linux work.

CRLF (\r\n) creates a new line as well as puts the cursor at the beginning of the new line. This is how we see it in Windows OS.

To summarize:

1. LF (LINE FEED)

• stands for Line Feed
• denoted with \n
• creates a new line in the code
• The ASCII code is 10.
• Used by Unix and other OSes like it or based around it, like Linux and modern macOS.

2. CR (CARRIAGE RETURN)

• stands for CARRIAGE RETURN
• denoted with \r
• puts the cursor on the beginning of a line.
• The ASCII code is 13.
• Used by old versions of macOS before Mac OS X.

3. CRLF (CARRIAGE RETURN AND LINE FEED)

• stands for CARRIAGE RETURN and LINE FEED
• denoted with \r\n
• creates a new line and puts the cursor at the beginning of that new line.
• The ASCII code is 10 for LF and 13 for CR.
• Primarily used on Windows OS.

Git uses LF by default. So when we use Git on Windows, it throws a warning like- "CRLF will be replaced by LF" and automatically converts all CRLF into LF, so that code becomes compatible.

NB: Don't worry...see this less as a warning and more as a notification message.

Answer 24

On windows, I was getting this warning because my files names were too long. After renaming my files to something shorter (and restarting my editor, VS Code), the error went away.

Answer 25

I had the same issue, and doing git add . && git reset reverted all line endings correctly.