1GITATTRIBUTES(5) Git Manual GITATTRIBUTES(5)
2
6 gitattributes - Defining attributes per path
7
9 $GIT_DIR/info/attributes, .gitattributes
10
12 A gitattributes file is a simple text file that gives attributes to
13 pathnames.
14 Each line in gitattributes file is of form:
16 pattern attr1 attr2 ...
18 That is, a pattern followed by an attributes list, separated by
20 whitespaces. Leading and trailing whitespaces are ignored. Lines that
21 begin with # are ignored. Patterns that begin with a double quote are
22 quoted in C style. When the pattern matches the path in question, the
23 attributes listed on the line are given to the path.
24 Each attribute can be in one of these states for a given path:
26 Set
28 The path has the attribute with special value "true"; this is
29 specified by listing only the name of the attribute in the
30 attribute list.
31 Unset
33 The path has the attribute with special value "false"; this is
34 specified by listing the name of the attribute prefixed with a dash
35 - in the attribute list.
36 Set to a value
38 The path has the attribute with specified string value; this is
39 specified by listing the name of the attribute followed by an equal
40 sign = and its value in the attribute list.
41 Unspecified
43 No pattern matches the path, and nothing says if the path has or
44 does not have the attribute, the attribute for the path is said to
45 be Unspecified.
46 When more than one pattern matches the path, a later line overrides an
48 earlier line. This overriding is done per attribute.
49 The rules by which the pattern matches paths are the same as in
51 .gitignore files (see gitignore(5)), with a few exceptions:
52 · negative patterns are forbidden
54 · patterns that match a directory do not recursively match paths
56 inside that directory (so using the trailing-slash path/ syntax is
57 pointless in an attributes file; use path/** instead)
58 When deciding what attributes are assigned to a path, Git consults
60 $GIT_DIR/info/attributes file (which has the highest precedence),
61 .gitattributes file in the same directory as the path in question, and
62 its parent directories up to the toplevel of the work tree (the further
63 the directory that contains .gitattributes is from the path in
64 question, the lower its precedence). Finally global and system-wide
65 files are considered (they have the lowest precedence).
66 When the .gitattributes file is missing from the work tree, the path in
68 the index is used as a fall-back. During checkout process,
69 .gitattributes in the index is used and then the file in the working
70 tree is used as a fall-back.
71 If you wish to affect only a single repository (i.e., to assign
73 attributes to files that are particular to one user’s workflow for that
74 repository), then attributes should be placed in the
75 $GIT_DIR/info/attributes file. Attributes which should be
76 version-controlled and distributed to other repositories (i.e.,
77 attributes of interest to all users) should go into .gitattributes
78 files. Attributes that should affect all repositories for a single user
79 should be placed in a file specified by the core.attributesFile
80 configuration option (see git-config(1)). Its default value is
81 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/attributes. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set
82 or empty, $HOME/.config/git/attributes is used instead. Attributes for
83 all users on a system should be placed in the
84 $(prefix)/etc/gitattributes file.
85 Sometimes you would need to override a setting of an attribute for a
87 path to Unspecified state. This can be done by listing the name of the
88 attribute prefixed with an exclamation point !.
89
91 Certain operations by Git can be influenced by assigning particular
92 attributes to a path. Currently, the following operations are
93 attributes-aware.
94 Checking-out and checking-in
96 These attributes affect how the contents stored in the repository are
97 copied to the working tree files when commands such as git checkout and
98 git merge run. They also affect how Git stores the contents you prepare
99 in the working tree in the repository upon git add and git commit.
100 text
102 This attribute enables and controls end-of-line normalization. When
103 a text file is normalized, its line endings are converted to LF in
104 the repository. To control what line ending style is used in the
105 working directory, use the eol attribute for a single file and the
106 core.eol configuration variable for all text files. Note that
107 core.autocrlf overrides core.eol
108 Set
110 Setting the text attribute on a path enables end-of-line
111 normalization and marks the path as a text file. End-of-line
112 conversion takes place without guessing the content type.
113 Unset
115 Unsetting the text attribute on a path tells Git not to attempt
116 any end-of-line conversion upon checkin or checkout.
117 Set to string value "auto"
119 When text is set to "auto", the path is marked for automatic
120 end-of-line conversion. If Git decides that the content is
121 text, its line endings are converted to LF on checkin. When the
122 file has been committed with CRLF, no conversion is done.
123 Unspecified
125 If the text attribute is unspecified, Git uses the
126 core.autocrlf configuration variable to determine if the file
127 should be converted.
128 Any other value causes Git to act as if text has been left
130 unspecified.
131 eol
133 This attribute sets a specific line-ending style to be used in the
134 working directory. It enables end-of-line conversion without any
135 content checks, effectively setting the text attribute. Note that
136 setting this attribute on paths which are in the index with CRLF
137 line endings may make the paths to be considered dirty. Adding the
138 path to the index again will normalize the line endings in the
139 index.
140 Set to string value "crlf"
142 This setting forces Git to normalize line endings for this file
143 on checkin and convert them to CRLF when the file is checked
144 out.
145 Set to string value "lf"
147 This setting forces Git to normalize line endings to LF on
148 checkin and prevents conversion to CRLF when the file is
149 checked out.
150 Backwards compatibility with crlf attribute
152 For backwards compatibility, the crlf attribute is interpreted as
153 follows:
154 crlf text
156 -crlf -text
157 crlf=input eol=lf
158 End-of-line conversion
161 While Git normally leaves file contents alone, it can be configured
162 to normalize line endings to LF in the repository and, optionally,
163 to convert them to CRLF when files are checked out.
164 If you simply want to have CRLF line endings in your working
166 directory regardless of the repository you are working with, you
167 can set the config variable "core.autocrlf" without using any
168 attributes.
169 [core]
171 autocrlf = true
172 This does not force normalization of text files, but does ensure
175 that text files that you introduce to the repository have their
176 line endings normalized to LF when they are added, and that files
177 that are already normalized in the repository stay normalized.
178 If you want to ensure that text files that any contributor
180 introduces to the repository have their line endings normalized,
181 you can set the text attribute to "auto" for all files.
182 * text=auto
184 The attributes allow a fine-grained control, how the line endings
187 are converted. Here is an example that will make Git normalize
188 .txt, .vcproj and .sh files, ensure that .vcproj files have CRLF
189 and .sh files have LF in the working directory, and prevent .jpg
190 files from being normalized regardless of their content.
191 * text=auto
193 *.txt text
194 *.vcproj text eol=crlf
195 *.sh text eol=lf
196 *.jpg -text
197 Note
200 When text=auto conversion is enabled in a cross-platform
201 project using push and pull to a central repository the text
202 files containing CRLFs should be normalized.
203 From a clean working directory:
205 $ echo "* text=auto" >.gitattributes
207 $ git add --renormalize .
208 $ git status # Show files that will be normalized
209 $ git commit -m "Introduce end-of-line normalization"
210 If any files that should not be normalized show up in git status,
213 unset their text attribute before running git add -u.
214 manual.pdf -text
216 Conversely, text files that Git does not detect can have
219 normalization enabled manually.
220 weirdchars.txt text
222 If core.safecrlf is set to "true" or "warn", Git verifies if the
225 conversion is reversible for the current setting of core.autocrlf.
226 For "true", Git rejects irreversible conversions; for "warn", Git
227 only prints a warning but accepts an irreversible conversion. The
228 safety triggers to prevent such a conversion done to the files in
229 the work tree, but there are a few exceptions. Even though...
230 · git add itself does not touch the files in the work tree, the
232 next checkout would, so the safety triggers;
233 · git apply to update a text file with a patch does touch the
235 files in the work tree, but the operation is about text files
236 and CRLF conversion is about fixing the line ending
237 inconsistencies, so the safety does not trigger;
238 · git diff itself does not touch the files in the work tree, it
240 is often run to inspect the changes you intend to next git add.
241 To catch potential problems early, safety triggers.
242 working-tree-encoding
244 Git recognizes files encoded in ASCII or one of its supersets (e.g.
245 UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ...) as text files. Files encoded in certain
246 other encodings (e.g. UTF-16) are interpreted as binary and
247 consequently built-in Git text processing tools (e.g. git diff) as
248 well as most Git web front ends do not visualize the contents of
249 these files by default.
250 In these cases you can tell Git the encoding of a file in the
252 working directory with the working-tree-encoding attribute. If a
253 file with this attribute is added to Git, then Git reencodes the
254 content from the specified encoding to UTF-8. Finally, Git stores
255 the UTF-8 encoded content in its internal data structure (called
256 "the index"). On checkout the content is reencoded back to the
257 specified encoding.
258 Please note that using the working-tree-encoding attribute may have
260 a number of pitfalls:
261 · Alternative Git implementations (e.g. JGit or libgit2) and
263 older Git versions (as of March 2018) do not support the
264 working-tree-encoding attribute. If you decide to use the
265 working-tree-encoding attribute in your repository, then it is
266 strongly recommended to ensure that all clients working with
267 the repository support it.
268 For example, Microsoft Visual Studio resources files (`*.rc`) or
270 PowerShell script files (`*.ps1`) are sometimes encoded in UTF-16.
271 If you declare `*.ps1` as files as UTF-16 and you add `foo.ps1` with
272 a `working-tree-encoding` enabled Git client, then `foo.ps1` will be
273 stored as UTF-8 internally. A client without `working-tree-encoding`
274 support will checkout `foo.ps1` as UTF-8 encoded file. This will
275 typically cause trouble for the users of this file.
276 If a Git client, that does not support the `working-tree-encoding`
278 attribute, adds a new file `bar.ps1`, then `bar.ps1` will be
279 stored "as-is" internally (in this example probably as UTF-16).
280 A client with `working-tree-encoding` support will interpret the
281 internal contents as UTF-8 and try to convert it to UTF-16 on checkout.
282 That operation will fail and cause an error.
283 · Reencoding content to non-UTF encodings can cause errors as the
285 conversion might not be UTF-8 round trip safe. If you suspect
286 your encoding to not be round trip safe, then add it to
287 core.checkRoundtripEncoding to make Git check the round trip
288 encoding (see git-config(1)). SHIFT-JIS (Japanese character
289 set) is known to have round trip issues with UTF-8 and is
290 checked by default.
291 · Reencoding content requires resources that might slow down
293 certain Git operations (e.g git checkout or git add).
294 Use the working-tree-encoding attribute only if you cannot store a
296 file in UTF-8 encoding and if you want Git to be able to process
297 the content as text.
298 As an example, use the following attributes if your *.ps1 files are
300 UTF-16 encoded with byte order mark (BOM) and you want Git to
301 perform automatic line ending conversion based on your platform.
302 *.ps1 text working-tree-encoding=UTF-16
304 Use the following attributes if your *.ps1 files are UTF-16 little
307 endian encoded without BOM and you want Git to use Windows line
308 endings in the working directory. Please note, it is highly
309 recommended to explicitly define the line endings with eol if the
310 working-tree-encoding attribute is used to avoid ambiguity.
311 *.ps1 text working-tree-encoding=UTF-16LE eol=CRLF
313 You can get a list of all available encodings on your platform with
316 the following command:
317 iconv --list
319 If you do not know the encoding of a file, then you can use the
322 file command to guess the encoding:
323 file foo.ps1
325 ident
328 When the attribute ident is set for a path, Git replaces $Id$ in
329 the blob object with $Id:, followed by the 40-character hexadecimal
330 blob object name, followed by a dollar sign $ upon checkout. Any
331 byte sequence that begins with $Id: and ends with $ in the worktree
332 file is replaced with $Id$ upon check-in.
333 filter
335 A filter attribute can be set to a string value that names a filter
336 driver specified in the configuration.
337 A filter driver consists of a clean command and a smudge command,
339 either of which can be left unspecified. Upon checkout, when the
340 smudge command is specified, the command is fed the blob object
341 from its standard input, and its standard output is used to update
342 the worktree file. Similarly, the clean command is used to convert
343 the contents of worktree file upon checkin. By default these
344 commands process only a single blob and terminate. If a long
345 running process filter is used in place of clean and/or smudge
346 filters, then Git can process all blobs with a single filter
347 command invocation for the entire life of a single Git command, for
348 example git add --all. If a long running process filter is
349 configured then it always takes precedence over a configured single
350 blob filter. See section below for the description of the protocol
351 used to communicate with a process filter.
352 One use of the content filtering is to massage the content into a
354 shape that is more convenient for the platform, filesystem, and the
355 user to use. For this mode of operation, the key phrase here is
356 "more convenient" and not "turning something unusable into usable".
357 In other words, the intent is that if someone unsets the filter
358 driver definition, or does not have the appropriate filter program,
359 the project should still be usable.
360 Another use of the content filtering is to store the content that
362 cannot be directly used in the repository (e.g. a UUID that refers
363 to the true content stored outside Git, or an encrypted content)
364 and turn it into a usable form upon checkout (e.g. download the
365 external content, or decrypt the encrypted content).
366 These two filters behave differently, and by default, a filter is
368 taken as the former, massaging the contents into more convenient
369 shape. A missing filter driver definition in the config, or a
370 filter driver that exits with a non-zero status, is not an error
371 but makes the filter a no-op passthru.
372 You can declare that a filter turns a content that by itself is
374 unusable into a usable content by setting the
375 filter.<driver>.required configuration variable to true.
376 Note: Whenever the clean filter is changed, the repo should be
378 renormalized: $ git add --renormalize .
379 For example, in .gitattributes, you would assign the filter
381 attribute for paths.
382 *.c filter=indent
384 Then you would define a "filter.indent.clean" and
387 "filter.indent.smudge" configuration in your .git/config to specify
388 a pair of commands to modify the contents of C programs when the
389 source files are checked in ("clean" is run) and checked out (no
390 change is made because the command is "cat").
391 [filter "indent"]
393 clean = indent
394 smudge = cat
395 For best results, clean should not alter its output further if it
398 is run twice ("clean→clean" should be equivalent to "clean"), and
399 multiple smudge commands should not alter clean's output
400 ("smudge→smudge→clean" should be equivalent to "clean"). See the
401 section on merging below.
402 The "indent" filter is well-behaved in this regard: it will not
404 modify input that is already correctly indented. In this case, the
405 lack of a smudge filter means that the clean filter must accept its
406 own output without modifying it.
407 If a filter must succeed in order to make the stored contents
409 usable, you can declare that the filter is required, in the
410 configuration:
411 [filter "crypt"]
413 clean = openssl enc ...
414 smudge = openssl enc -d ...
415 required
416 Sequence "%f" on the filter command line is replaced with the name
419 of the file the filter is working on. A filter might use this in
420 keyword substitution. For example:
421 [filter "p4"]
423 clean = git-p4-filter --clean %f
424 smudge = git-p4-filter --smudge %f
425 Note that "%f" is the name of the path that is being worked on.
428 Depending on the version that is being filtered, the corresponding
429 file on disk may not exist, or may have different contents. So,
430 smudge and clean commands should not try to access the file on
431 disk, but only act as filters on the content provided to them on
432 standard input.
433 Long Running Filter Process
435 If the filter command (a string value) is defined via
436 filter.<driver>.process then Git can process all blobs with a
437 single filter invocation for the entire life of a single Git
438 command. This is achieved by using the long-running process
439 protocol (described in
440 technical/long-running-process-protocol.txt).
441 When Git encounters the first file that needs to be cleaned or
443 smudged, it starts the filter and performs the handshake. In the
444 handshake, the welcome message sent by Git is "git-filter-client",
445 only version 2 is suppported, and the supported capabilities are
446 "clean", "smudge", and "delay".
447 Afterwards Git sends a list of "key=value" pairs terminated with a
449 flush packet. The list will contain at least the filter command
450 (based on the supported capabilities) and the pathname of the file
451 to filter relative to the repository root. Right after the flush
452 packet Git sends the content split in zero or more pkt-line packets
453 and a flush packet to terminate content. Please note, that the
454 filter must not send any response before it received the content
455 and the final flush packet. Also note that the "value" of a
456 "key=value" pair can contain the "=" character whereas the key
457 would never contain that character.
458 packet: git> command=smudge
460 packet: git> pathname=path/testfile.dat
461 packet: git> 0000
462 packet: git> CONTENT
463 packet: git> 0000
464 The filter is expected to respond with a list of "key=value" pairs
467 terminated with a flush packet. If the filter does not experience
468 problems then the list must contain a "success" status. Right after
469 these packets the filter is expected to send the content in zero or
470 more pkt-line packets and a flush packet at the end. Finally, a
471 second list of "key=value" pairs terminated with a flush packet is
472 expected. The filter can change the status in the second list or
473 keep the status as is with an empty list. Please note that the
474 empty list must be terminated with a flush packet regardless.
475 packet: git< status=success
477 packet: git< 0000
478 packet: git< SMUDGED_CONTENT
479 packet: git< 0000
480 packet: git< 0000 # empty list, keep "status=success" unchanged!
481 If the result content is empty then the filter is expected to
484 respond with a "success" status and a flush packet to signal the
485 empty content.
486 packet: git< status=success
488 packet: git< 0000
489 packet: git< 0000 # empty content!
490 packet: git< 0000 # empty list, keep "status=success" unchanged!
491 In case the filter cannot or does not want to process the content,
494 it is expected to respond with an "error" status.
495 packet: git< status=error
497 packet: git< 0000
498 If the filter experiences an error during processing, then it can
501 send the status "error" after the content was (partially or
502 completely) sent.
503 packet: git< status=success
505 packet: git< 0000
506 packet: git< HALF_WRITTEN_ERRONEOUS_CONTENT
507 packet: git< 0000
508 packet: git< status=error
509 packet: git< 0000
510 In case the filter cannot or does not want to process the content
513 as well as any future content for the lifetime of the Git process,
514 then it is expected to respond with an "abort" status at any point
515 in the protocol.
516 packet: git< status=abort
518 packet: git< 0000
519 Git neither stops nor restarts the filter process in case the
522 "error"/"abort" status is set. However, Git sets its exit code
523 according to the filter.<driver>.required flag, mimicking the
524 behavior of the filter.<driver>.clean / filter.<driver>.smudge
525 mechanism.
526 If the filter dies during the communication or does not adhere to
528 the protocol then Git will stop the filter process and restart it
529 with the next file that needs to be processed. Depending on the
530 filter.<driver>.required flag Git will interpret that as error.
531 Delay
533 If the filter supports the "delay" capability, then Git can send
534 the flag "can-delay" after the filter command and pathname. This
535 flag denotes that the filter can delay filtering the current blob
536 (e.g. to compensate network latencies) by responding with no
537 content but with the status "delayed" and a flush packet.
538 packet: git> command=smudge
540 packet: git> pathname=path/testfile.dat
541 packet: git> can-delay=1
542 packet: git> 0000
543 packet: git> CONTENT
544 packet: git> 0000
545 packet: git< status=delayed
546 packet: git< 0000
547 If the filter supports the "delay" capability then it must support
550 the "list_available_blobs" command. If Git sends this command, then
551 the filter is expected to return a list of pathnames representing
552 blobs that have been delayed earlier and are now available. The
553 list must be terminated with a flush packet followed by a "success"
554 status that is also terminated with a flush packet. If no blobs for
555 the delayed paths are available, yet, then the filter is expected
556 to block the response until at least one blob becomes available.
557 The filter can tell Git that it has no more delayed blobs by
558 sending an empty list. As soon as the filter responds with an empty
559 list, Git stops asking. All blobs that Git has not received at this
560 point are considered missing and will result in an error.
561 packet: git> command=list_available_blobs
563 packet: git> 0000
564 packet: git< pathname=path/testfile.dat
565 packet: git< pathname=path/otherfile.dat
566 packet: git< 0000
567 packet: git< status=success
568 packet: git< 0000
569 After Git received the pathnames, it will request the corresponding
572 blobs again. These requests contain a pathname and an empty content
573 section. The filter is expected to respond with the smudged content
574 in the usual way as explained above.
575 packet: git> command=smudge
577 packet: git> pathname=path/testfile.dat
578 packet: git> 0000
579 packet: git> 0000 # empty content!
580 packet: git< status=success
581 packet: git< 0000
582 packet: git< SMUDGED_CONTENT
583 packet: git< 0000
584 packet: git< 0000 # empty list, keep "status=success" unchanged!
585 Example
588 A long running filter demo implementation can be found in
589 contrib/long-running-filter/example.pl located in the Git core
590 repository. If you develop your own long running filter process
591 then the GIT_TRACE_PACKET environment variables can be very helpful
592 for debugging (see git(1)).
593 Please note that you cannot use an existing filter.<driver>.clean
595 or filter.<driver>.smudge command with filter.<driver>.process
596 because the former two use a different inter process communication
597 protocol than the latter one.
598 Interaction between checkin/checkout attributes
600 In the check-in codepath, the worktree file is first converted with
601 filter driver (if specified and corresponding driver defined), then
602 the result is processed with ident (if specified), and then finally
603 with text (again, if specified and applicable).
604 In the check-out codepath, the blob content is first converted with
606 text, and then ident and fed to filter.
607 Merging branches with differing checkin/checkout attributes
609 If you have added attributes to a file that cause the canonical
610 repository format for that file to change, such as adding a
611 clean/smudge filter or text/eol/ident attributes, merging anything
612 where the attribute is not in place would normally cause merge
613 conflicts.
614 To prevent these unnecessary merge conflicts, Git can be told to
616 run a virtual check-out and check-in of all three stages of a file
617 when resolving a three-way merge by setting the merge.renormalize
618 configuration variable. This prevents changes caused by check-in
619 conversion from causing spurious merge conflicts when a converted
620 file is merged with an unconverted file.
621 As long as a "smudge→clean" results in the same output as a "clean"
623 even on files that are already smudged, this strategy will
624 automatically resolve all filter-related conflicts. Filters that do
625 not act in this way may cause additional merge conflicts that must
626 be resolved manually.
627 Generating diff text
629 diff
630 The attribute diff affects how Git generates diffs for particular
631 files. It can tell Git whether to generate a textual patch for the
632 path or to treat the path as a binary file. It can also affect what
633 line is shown on the hunk header @@ -k,l +n,m @@ line, tell Git to
634 use an external command to generate the diff, or ask Git to convert
635 binary files to a text format before generating the diff.
636 Set
638 A path to which the diff attribute is set is treated as text,
639 even when they contain byte values that normally never appear
640 in text files, such as NUL.
641 Unset
643 A path to which the diff attribute is unset will generate
644 Binary files differ (or a binary patch, if binary patches are
645 enabled).
646 Unspecified
648 A path to which the diff attribute is unspecified first gets
649 its contents inspected, and if it looks like text and is
650 smaller than core.bigFileThreshold, it is treated as text.
651 Otherwise it would generate Binary files differ.
652 String
654 Diff is shown using the specified diff driver. Each driver may
655 specify one or more options, as described in the following
656 section. The options for the diff driver "foo" are defined by
657 the configuration variables in the "diff.foo" section of the
658 Git config file.
659 Defining an external diff driver
661 The definition of a diff driver is done in gitconfig, not
662 gitattributes file, so strictly speaking this manual page is a
663 wrong place to talk about it. However...
664 To define an external diff driver jcdiff, add a section to your
666 $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:
667 [diff "jcdiff"]
669 command = j-c-diff
670 When Git needs to show you a diff for the path with diff attribute
673 set to jcdiff, it calls the command you specified with the above
674 configuration, i.e. j-c-diff, with 7 parameters, just like
675 GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF program is called. See git(1) for details.
676 Defining a custom hunk-header
678 Each group of changes (called a "hunk") in the textual diff output
679 is prefixed with a line of the form:
680 @@ -k,l +n,m @@ TEXT
682 This is called a hunk header. The "TEXT" portion is by default a
684 line that begins with an alphabet, an underscore or a dollar sign;
685 this matches what GNU diff -p output uses. This default selection
686 however is not suited for some contents, and you can use a
687 customized pattern to make a selection.
688 First, in .gitattributes, you would assign the diff attribute for
690 paths.
691 *.tex diff=tex
693 Then, you would define a "diff.tex.xfuncname" configuration to
696 specify a regular expression that matches a line that you would
697 want to appear as the hunk header "TEXT". Add a section to your
698 $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:
699 [diff "tex"]
701 xfuncname = "^(\\\\(sub)*section\\{.*)$"
702 Note. A single level of backslashes are eaten by the configuration
705 file parser, so you would need to double the backslashes; the
706 pattern above picks a line that begins with a backslash, and zero
707 or more occurrences of sub followed by section followed by open
708 brace, to the end of line.
709 There are a few built-in patterns to make this easier, and tex is
711 one of them, so you do not have to write the above in your
712 configuration file (you still need to enable this with the
713 attribute mechanism, via .gitattributes). The following built in
714 patterns are available:
715 · ada suitable for source code in the Ada language.
717 · bibtex suitable for files with BibTeX coded references.
719 · cpp suitable for source code in the C and C++ languages.
721 · csharp suitable for source code in the C# language.
723 · css suitable for cascading style sheets.
725 · fortran suitable for source code in the Fortran language.
727 · fountain suitable for Fountain documents.
729 · golang suitable for source code in the Go language.
731 · html suitable for HTML/XHTML documents.
733 · java suitable for source code in the Java language.
735 · matlab suitable for source code in the MATLAB language.
737 · objc suitable for source code in the Objective-C language.
739 · pascal suitable for source code in the Pascal/Delphi language.
741 · perl suitable for source code in the Perl language.
743 · php suitable for source code in the PHP language.
745 · python suitable for source code in the Python language.
747 · ruby suitable for source code in the Ruby language.
749 · tex suitable for source code for LaTeX documents.
751 Customizing word diff
753 You can customize the rules that git diff --word-diff uses to split
754 words in a line, by specifying an appropriate regular expression in
755 the "diff.*.wordRegex" configuration variable. For example, in TeX
756 a backslash followed by a sequence of letters forms a command, but
757 several such commands can be run together without intervening
758 whitespace. To separate them, use a regular expression in your
759 $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:
760 [diff "tex"]
762 wordRegex = "\\\\[a-zA-Z]+|[{}]|\\\\.|[^\\{}[:space:]]+"
763 A built-in pattern is provided for all languages listed in the
766 previous section.
767 Performing text diffs of binary files
769 Sometimes it is desirable to see the diff of a text-converted
770 version of some binary files. For example, a word processor
771 document can be converted to an ASCII text representation, and the
772 diff of the text shown. Even though this conversion loses some
773 information, the resulting diff is useful for human viewing (but
774 cannot be applied directly).
775 The textconv config option is used to define a program for
777 performing such a conversion. The program should take a single
778 argument, the name of a file to convert, and produce the resulting
779 text on stdout.
780 For example, to show the diff of the exif information of a file
782 instead of the binary information (assuming you have the exif tool
783 installed), add the following section to your $GIT_DIR/config file
784 (or $HOME/.gitconfig file):
785 [diff "jpg"]
787 textconv = exif
788 Note
791 The text conversion is generally a one-way conversion; in this
792 example, we lose the actual image contents and focus just on
793 the text data. This means that diffs generated by textconv are
794 not suitable for applying. For this reason, only git diff and
795 the git log family of commands (i.e., log, whatchanged, show)
796 will perform text conversion. git format-patch will never
797 generate this output. If you want to send somebody a
798 text-converted diff of a binary file (e.g., because it quickly
799 conveys the changes you have made), you should generate it
800 separately and send it as a comment in addition to the usual
801 binary diff that you might send.
802 Because text conversion can be slow, especially when doing a large
804 number of them with git log -p, Git provides a mechanism to cache
805 the output and use it in future diffs. To enable caching, set the
806 "cachetextconv" variable in your diff driver’s config. For example:
807 [diff "jpg"]
809 textconv = exif
810 cachetextconv = true
811 This will cache the result of running "exif" on each blob
814 indefinitely. If you change the textconv config variable for a diff
815 driver, Git will automatically invalidate the cache entries and
816 re-run the textconv filter. If you want to invalidate the cache
817 manually (e.g., because your version of "exif" was updated and now
818 produces better output), you can remove the cache manually with git
819 update-ref -d refs/notes/textconv/jpg (where "jpg" is the name of
820 the diff driver, as in the example above).
821 Choosing textconv versus external diff
823 If you want to show differences between binary or
824 specially-formatted blobs in your repository, you can choose to use
825 either an external diff command, or to use textconv to convert them
826 to a diff-able text format. Which method you choose depends on your
827 exact situation.
828 The advantage of using an external diff command is flexibility. You
830 are not bound to find line-oriented changes, nor is it necessary
831 for the output to resemble unified diff. You are free to locate and
832 report changes in the most appropriate way for your data format.
833 A textconv, by comparison, is much more limiting. You provide a
835 transformation of the data into a line-oriented text format, and
836 Git uses its regular diff tools to generate the output. There are
837 several advantages to choosing this method:
838 1. Ease of use. It is often much simpler to write a binary to text
840 transformation than it is to perform your own diff. In many
841 cases, existing programs can be used as textconv filters (e.g.,
842 exif, odt2txt).
843 2. Git diff features. By performing only the transformation step
845 yourself, you can still utilize many of Git’s diff features,
846 including colorization, word-diff, and combined diffs for
847 merges.
848 3. Caching. Textconv caching can speed up repeated diffs, such as
850 those you might trigger by running git log -p.
851 Marking files as binary
853 Git usually guesses correctly whether a blob contains text or
854 binary data by examining the beginning of the contents. However,
855 sometimes you may want to override its decision, either because a
856 blob contains binary data later in the file, or because the
857 content, while technically composed of text characters, is opaque
858 to a human reader. For example, many postscript files contain only
859 ASCII characters, but produce noisy and meaningless diffs.
860 The simplest way to mark a file as binary is to unset the diff
862 attribute in the .gitattributes file:
863 *.ps -diff
865 This will cause Git to generate Binary files differ (or a binary
868 patch, if binary patches are enabled) instead of a regular diff.
869 However, one may also want to specify other diff driver attributes.
871 For example, you might want to use textconv to convert postscript
872 files to an ASCII representation for human viewing, but otherwise
873 treat them as binary files. You cannot specify both -diff and
874 diff=ps attributes. The solution is to use the diff.*.binary config
875 option:
876 [diff "ps"]
878 textconv = ps2ascii
879 binary = true
880 Performing a three-way merge
883 merge
884 The attribute merge affects how three versions of a file are merged
885 when a file-level merge is necessary during git merge, and other
886 commands such as git revert and git cherry-pick.
887 Set
889 Built-in 3-way merge driver is used to merge the contents in a
890 way similar to merge command of RCS suite. This is suitable for
891 ordinary text files.
892 Unset
894 Take the version from the current branch as the tentative merge
895 result, and declare that the merge has conflicts. This is
896 suitable for binary files that do not have a well-defined merge
897 semantics.
898 Unspecified
900 By default, this uses the same built-in 3-way merge driver as
901 is the case when the merge attribute is set. However, the
902 merge.default configuration variable can name different merge
903 driver to be used with paths for which the merge attribute is
904 unspecified.
905 String
907 3-way merge is performed using the specified custom merge
908 driver. The built-in 3-way merge driver can be explicitly
909 specified by asking for "text" driver; the built-in "take the
910 current branch" driver can be requested with "binary".
911 Built-in merge drivers
913 There are a few built-in low-level merge drivers defined that can
914 be asked for via the merge attribute.
915 text
917 Usual 3-way file level merge for text files. Conflicted regions
918 are marked with conflict markers <<<<<<<, ======= and >>>>>>>.
919 The version from your branch appears before the ======= marker,
920 and the version from the merged branch appears after the
921 ======= marker.
922 binary
924 Keep the version from your branch in the work tree, but leave
925 the path in the conflicted state for the user to sort out.
926 union
928 Run 3-way file level merge for text files, but take lines from
929 both versions, instead of leaving conflict markers. This tends
930 to leave the added lines in the resulting file in random order
931 and the user should verify the result. Do not use this if you
932 do not understand the implications.
933 Defining a custom merge driver
935 The definition of a merge driver is done in the .git/config file,
936 not in the gitattributes file, so strictly speaking this manual
937 page is a wrong place to talk about it. However...
938 To define a custom merge driver filfre, add a section to your
940 $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:
941 [merge "filfre"]
943 name = feel-free merge driver
944 driver = filfre %O %A %B %L %P
945 recursive = binary
946 The merge.*.name variable gives the driver a human-readable name.
949 The ‘merge.*.driver` variable’s value is used to construct a
951 command to run to merge ancestor’s version (%O), current version
952 (%A) and the other branches’ version (%B). These three tokens are
953 replaced with the names of temporary files that hold the contents
954 of these versions when the command line is built. Additionally, %L
955 will be replaced with the conflict marker size (see below).
956 The merge driver is expected to leave the result of the merge in
958 the file named with %A by overwriting it, and exit with zero status
959 if it managed to merge them cleanly, or non-zero if there were
960 conflicts.
961 The merge.*.recursive variable specifies what other merge driver to
963 use when the merge driver is called for an internal merge between
964 common ancestors, when there are more than one. When left
965 unspecified, the driver itself is used for both internal merge and
966 the final merge.
967 The merge driver can learn the pathname in which the merged result
969 will be stored via placeholder %P.
970 conflict-marker-size
972 This attribute controls the length of conflict markers left in the
973 work tree file during a conflicted merge. Only setting to the value
974 to a positive integer has any meaningful effect.
975 For example, this line in .gitattributes can be used to tell the
977 merge machinery to leave much longer (instead of the usual
978 7-character-long) conflict markers when merging the file
979 Documentation/git-merge.txt results in a conflict.
980 Documentation/git-merge.txt conflict-marker-size=32
982 Checking whitespace errors
985 whitespace
986 The core.whitespace configuration variable allows you to define
987 what diff and apply should consider whitespace errors for all paths
988 in the project (See git-config(1)). This attribute gives you finer
989 control per path.
990 Set
992 Notice all types of potential whitespace errors known to Git.
993 The tab width is taken from the value of the core.whitespace
994 configuration variable.
995 Unset
997 Do not notice anything as error.
998 Unspecified
1000 Use the value of the core.whitespace configuration variable to
1001 decide what to notice as error.
1002 String
1004 Specify a comma separate list of common whitespace problems to
1005 notice in the same format as the core.whitespace configuration
1006 variable.
1007 Creating an archive
1009 export-ignore
1010 Files and directories with the attribute export-ignore won’t be
1011 added to archive files.
1012 export-subst
1014 If the attribute export-subst is set for a file then Git will
1015 expand several placeholders when adding this file to an archive.
1016 The expansion depends on the availability of a commit ID, i.e., if
1017 git-archive(1) has been given a tree instead of a commit or a tag
1018 then no replacement will be done. The placeholders are the same as
1019 those for the option --pretty=format: of git-log(1), except that
1020 they need to be wrapped like this: $Format:PLACEHOLDERS$ in the
1021 file. E.g. the string $Format:%H$ will be replaced by the commit
1022 hash.
1023 Packing objects
1025 delta
1026 Delta compression will not be attempted for blobs for paths with
1027 the attribute delta set to false.
1028 Viewing files in GUI tools
1030 encoding
1031 The value of this attribute specifies the character encoding that
1032 should be used by GUI tools (e.g. gitk(1) and git-gui(1)) to
1033 display the contents of the relevant file. Note that due to
1034 performance considerations gitk(1) does not use this attribute
1035 unless you manually enable per-file encodings in its options.
1036 If this attribute is not set or has an invalid value, the value of
1038 the gui.encoding configuration variable is used instead (See git-
1039 config(1)).
1040
1042 You do not want any end-of-line conversions applied to, nor textual
1043 diffs produced for, any binary file you track. You would need to
1044 specify e.g.
1045 *.jpg -text -diff
1047 but that may become cumbersome, when you have many attributes. Using
1050 macro attributes, you can define an attribute that, when set, also sets
1051 or unsets a number of other attributes at the same time. The system
1052 knows a built-in macro attribute, binary:
1053 *.jpg binary
1055 Setting the "binary" attribute also unsets the "text" and "diff"
1058 attributes as above. Note that macro attributes can only be "Set",
1059 though setting one might have the effect of setting or unsetting other
1060 attributes or even returning other attributes to the "Unspecified"
1061 state.
1062
1064 Custom macro attributes can be defined only in top-level gitattributes
1065 files ($GIT_DIR/info/attributes, the .gitattributes file at the top
1066 level of the working tree, or the global or system-wide gitattributes
1067 files), not in .gitattributes files in working tree subdirectories. The
1068 built-in macro attribute "binary" is equivalent to:
1069 [attr]binary -diff -merge -text
1071
1074 If you have these three gitattributes file:
1075 (in $GIT_DIR/info/attributes)
1077 a* foo !bar -baz
1079 (in .gitattributes)
1081 abc foo bar baz
1082 (in t/.gitattributes)
1084 ab* merge=filfre
1085 abc -foo -bar
1086 *.c frotz
1087 the attributes given to path t/abc are computed as follows:
1090 1. By examining t/.gitattributes (which is in the same directory as
1092 the path in question), Git finds that the first line matches.
1093 merge attribute is set. It also finds that the second line matches,
1094 and attributes foo and bar are unset.
1095 2. Then it examines .gitattributes (which is in the parent directory),
1097 and finds that the first line matches, but t/.gitattributes file
1098 already decided how merge, foo and bar attributes should be given
1099 to this path, so it leaves foo and bar unset. Attribute baz is set.
1100 3. Finally it examines $GIT_DIR/info/attributes. This file is used to
1102 override the in-tree settings. The first line is a match, and foo
1103 is set, bar is reverted to unspecified state, and baz is unset.
1104 As the result, the attributes assignment to t/abc becomes:
1106 foo set to true
1108 bar unspecified
1109 baz set to false
1110 merge set to string value "filfre"
1111 frotz unspecified
1112
1115 git-check-attr(1).
1116
1118 Part of the git(1) suite
1119Git 2.18.1 05/14/2019 GITATTRIBUTES(5)