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GITATTRIBUTES(5)		  Git Manual		      GITATTRIBUTES(5)

NAME
       gitattributes - defining attributes per path

SYNOPSIS
       $GIT_DIR/info/attributes, .gitattributes

DESCRIPTION
       A gitattributes file is a simple text file that gives attributes to
       pathnames.

       Each line in gitattributes file is of form:

	   pattern attr1 attr2 ...

       That is, a pattern followed by an attributes list, separated by
       whitespaces. When the pattern matches the path in question, the
       attributes listed on the line are given to the path.

       Each attribute can be in one of these states for a given path:

       Set
	   The path has the attribute with special value "true"; this is
	   specified by listing only the name of the attribute in the
	   attribute list.

       Unset
	   The path has the attribute with special value "false"; this is
	   specified by listing the name of the attribute prefixed with a dash
	   - in the attribute list.

       Set to a value
	   The path has the attribute with specified string value; this is
	   specified by listing the name of the attribute followed by an equal
	   sign = and its value in the attribute list.

       Unspecified
	   No pattern matches the path, and nothing says if the path has or
	   does not have the attribute, the attribute for the path is said to
	   be Unspecified.

       When more than one pattern matches the path, a later line overrides an
       earlier line. This overriding is done per attribute. The rules how the
       pattern matches paths are the same as in .gitignore files; see
       gitignore(5).

       When deciding what attributes are assigned to a path, git consults
       $GIT_DIR/info/attributes file (which has the highest precedence),
       .gitattributes file in the same directory as the path in question, and
       its parent directories up to the toplevel of the work tree (the further
       the directory that contains .gitattributes is from the path in
       question, the lower its precedence).

       If you wish to affect only a single repository (i.e., to assign
       attributes to files that are particular to one user’s workflow), then
       attributes should be placed in the $GIT_DIR/info/attributes file.
       Attributes which should be version-controlled and distributed to other
       repositories (i.e., attributes of interest to all users) should go into
       .gitattributes files.

       Sometimes you would need to override an setting of an attribute for a
       path to unspecified state. This can be done by listing the name of the
       attribute prefixed with an exclamation point !.

EFFECTS
       Certain operations by git can be influenced by assigning particular
       attributes to a path. Currently, the following operations are
       attributes-aware.

   Checking-out and checking-in
       These attributes affect how the contents stored in the repository are
       copied to the working tree files when commands such as git checkout and
       git merge run. They also affect how git stores the contents you prepare
       in the working tree in the repository upon git add and git commit.

       crlf
	   This attribute controls the line-ending convention.

	   Set
	       Setting the crlf attribute on a path is meant to mark the path
	       as a "text" file.  core.autocrlf conversion takes place without
	       guessing the content type by inspection.

	   Unset
	       Unsetting the crlf attribute on a path tells git not to attempt
	       any end-of-line conversion upon checkin or checkout.

	   Unspecified
	       Unspecified crlf attribute tells git to apply the core.autocrlf
	       conversion when the file content looks like text.

	   Set to string value "input"
	       This is similar to setting the attribute to true, but also
	       forces git to act as if core.autocrlf is set to input for the
	       path.

	   Any other value set to crlf attribute is ignored and git acts as if
	   the attribute is left unspecified.

       The core.autocrlf conversion
	   If the configuration variable core.autocrlf is false, no conversion
	   is done.

	   When core.autocrlf is true, it means that the platform wants CRLF
	   line endings for files in the working tree, and you want to convert
	   them back to the normal LF line endings when checking in to the
	   repository.

	   When core.autocrlf is set to "input", line endings are converted to
	   LF upon checkin, but there is no conversion done upon checkout.

	   If core.safecrlf is set to "true" or "warn", git verifies if the
	   conversion is reversible for the current setting of core.autocrlf.
	   For "true", git rejects irreversible conversions; for "warn", git
	   only prints a warning but accepts an irreversible conversion. The
	   safety triggers to prevent such a conversion done to the files in
	   the work tree, but there are a few exceptions. Even though...

	   ·	git add itself does not touch the files in the work tree, the
	       next checkout would, so the safety triggers;

	   ·	git apply to update a text file with a patch does touch the
	       files in the work tree, but the operation is about text files
	       and CRLF conversion is about fixing the line ending
	       inconsistencies, so the safety does not trigger;

	   ·	git diff itself does not touch the files in the work tree, it
	       is often run to inspect the changes you intend to next git add.
	       To catch potential problems early, safety triggers.

       ident
	   When the attribute ident is set for a path, git replaces $Id$ in
	   the blob object with $Id:, followed by the 40-character hexadecimal
	   blob object name, followed by a dollar sign $ upon checkout. Any
	   byte sequence that begins with $Id: and ends with $ in the worktree
	   file is replaced with $Id$ upon check-in.

       filter
	   A filter attribute can be set to a string value that names a filter
	   driver specified in the configuration.

	   A filter driver consists of a clean command and a smudge command,
	   either of which can be left unspecified. Upon checkout, when the
	   smudge command is specified, the command is fed the blob object
	   from its standard input, and its standard output is used to update
	   the worktree file. Similarly, the clean command is used to convert
	   the contents of worktree file upon checkin.

	   A missing filter driver definition in the config is not an error
	   but makes the filter a no-op passthru.

	   The content filtering is done to massage the content into a shape
	   that is more convenient for the platform, filesystem, and the user
	   to use. The key phrase here is "more convenient" and not "turning
	   something unusable into usable". In other words, the intent is that
	   if someone unsets the filter driver definition, or does not have
	   the appropriate filter program, the project should still be usable.

	   For example, in .gitattributes, you would assign the filter
	   attribute for paths.

	       *.c     filter=indent

	   Then you would define a "filter.indent.clean" and
	   "filter.indent.smudge" configuration in your .git/config to specify
	   a pair of commands to modify the contents of C programs when the
	   source files are checked in ("clean" is run) and checked out (no
	   change is made because the command is "cat").

	       [filter "indent"]
		       clean = indent
		       smudge = cat

       Interaction between checkin/checkout attributes
	   In the check-in codepath, the worktree file is first converted with
	   filter driver (if specified and corresponding driver defined), then
	   the result is processed with ident (if specified), and then finally
	   with crlf (again, if specified and applicable).

	   In the check-out codepath, the blob content is first converted with
	   crlf, and then ident and fed to filter.

   Generating diff text
       diff
	   The attribute diff affects how git generates diffs for particular
	   files. It can tell git whether to generate a textual patch for the
	   path or to treat the path as a binary file. It can also affect what
	   line is shown on the hunk header @@ -k,l +n,m @@ line, tell git to
	   use an external command to generate the diff, or ask git to convert
	   binary files to a text format before generating the diff.

	   Set
	       A path to which the diff attribute is set is treated as text,
	       even when they contain byte values that normally never appear
	       in text files, such as NUL.

	   Unset
	       A path to which the diff attribute is unset will generate
	       Binary files differ (or a binary patch, if binary patches are
	       enabled).

	   Unspecified
	       A path to which the diff attribute is unspecified first gets
	       its contents inspected, and if it looks like text, it is
	       treated as text. Otherwise it would generate Binary files
	       differ.

	   String
	       Diff is shown using the specified diff driver. Each driver may
	       specify one or more options, as described in the following
	       section. The options for the diff driver "foo" are defined by
	       the configuration variables in the "diff.foo" section of the
	       git config file.

       Defining an external diff driver
	   The definition of a diff driver is done in gitconfig, not
	   gitattributes file, so strictly speaking this manual page is a
	   wrong place to talk about it. However...

	   To define an external diff driver jcdiff, add a section to your
	   $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:

	       [diff "jcdiff"]
		       command = j-c-diff

	   When git needs to show you a diff for the path with diff attribute
	   set to jcdiff, it calls the command you specified with the above
	   configuration, i.e. j-c-diff, with 7 parameters, just like
	   GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF program is called. See git(1) for details.

       Defining a custom hunk-header
	   Each group of changes (called a "hunk") in the textual diff output
	   is prefixed with a line of the form:

	       @@ -k,l +n,m @@ TEXT

	   This is called a hunk header. The "TEXT" portion is by default a
	   line that begins with an alphabet, an underscore or a dollar sign;
	   this matches what GNU diff -p output uses. This default selection
	   however is not suited for some contents, and you can use a
	   customized pattern to make a selection.

	   First, in .gitattributes, you would assign the diff attribute for
	   paths.

	       *.tex   diff=tex

	   Then, you would define a "diff.tex.xfuncname" configuration to
	   specify a regular expression that matches a line that you would
	   want to appear as the hunk header "TEXT". Add a section to your
	   $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:

	       [diff "tex"]
		       xfuncname = "^(\\\\(sub)*section\\{.*)$"

	   Note. A single level of backslashes are eaten by the configuration
	   file parser, so you would need to double the backslashes; the
	   pattern above picks a line that begins with a backslash, and zero
	   or more occurrences of sub followed by section followed by open
	   brace, to the end of line.

	   There are a few built-in patterns to make this easier, and tex is
	   one of them, so you do not have to write the above in your
	   configuration file (you still need to enable this with the
	   attribute mechanism, via .gitattributes). The following built in
	   patterns are available:

	   ·	bibtex suitable for files with BibTeX coded references.

	   ·	cpp suitable for source code in the C and C++ languages.

	   ·	html suitable for HTML/XHTML documents.

	   ·	java suitable for source code in the Java language.

	   ·	objc suitable for source code in the Objective-C language.

	   ·	pascal suitable for source code in the Pascal/Delphi language.

	   ·	php suitable for source code in the PHP language.

	   ·	python suitable for source code in the Python language.

	   ·	ruby suitable for source code in the Ruby language.

	   ·	tex suitable for source code for LaTeX documents.

       Customizing word diff
	   You can customize the rules that git diff --color-words uses to
	   split words in a line, by specifying an appropriate regular
	   expression in the "diff.*.wordRegex" configuration variable. For
	   example, in TeX a backslash followed by a sequence of letters forms
	   a command, but several such commands can be run together without
	   intervening whitespace. To separate them, use a regular expression
	   in your $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:

	       [diff "tex"]
		       wordRegex = "\\\\[a-zA-Z]+|[{}]|\\\\.|[^\\{}[:space:]]+"

	   A built-in pattern is provided for all languages listed in the
	   previous section.

       Performing text diffs of binary files
	   Sometimes it is desirable to see the diff of a text-converted
	   version of some binary files. For example, a word processor
	   document can be converted to an ASCII text representation, and the
	   diff of the text shown. Even though this conversion loses some
	   information, the resulting diff is useful for human viewing (but
	   cannot be applied directly).

	   The textconv config option is used to define a program for
	   performing such a conversion. The program should take a single
	   argument, the name of a file to convert, and produce the resulting
	   text on stdout.

	   For example, to show the diff of the exif information of a file
	   instead of the binary information (assuming you have the exif tool
	   installed), add the following section to your $GIT_DIR/config file
	   (or $HOME/.gitconfig file):

	       [diff "jpg"]
		       textconv = exif

	       Note
	       The text conversion is generally a one-way conversion; in this
	       example, we lose the actual image contents and focus just on
	       the text data. This means that diffs generated by textconv are
	       not suitable for applying. For this reason, only git diff and
	       the git log family of commands (i.e., log, whatchanged, show)
	       will perform text conversion. git format-patch will never
	       generate this output. If you want to send somebody a
	       text-converted diff of a binary file (e.g., because it quickly
	       conveys the changes you have made), you should generate it
	       separately and send it as a comment in addition to the usual
	       binary diff that you might send.

   Performing a three-way merge
       merge
	   The attribute merge affects how three versions of a file is merged
	   when a file-level merge is necessary during git merge, and other
	   commands such as git revert and git cherry-pick.

	   Set
	       Built-in 3-way merge driver is used to merge the contents in a
	       way similar to merge command of RCS suite. This is suitable for
	       ordinary text files.

	   Unset
	       Take the version from the current branch as the tentative merge
	       result, and declare that the merge has conflicts. This is
	       suitable for binary files that does not have a well-defined
	       merge semantics.

	   Unspecified
	       By default, this uses the same built-in 3-way merge driver as
	       is the case the merge attribute is set. However, merge.default
	       configuration variable can name different merge driver to be
	       used for paths to which the merge attribute is unspecified.

	   String
	       3-way merge is performed using the specified custom merge
	       driver. The built-in 3-way merge driver can be explicitly
	       specified by asking for "text" driver; the built-in "take the
	       current branch" driver can be requested with "binary".

       Built-in merge drivers
	   There are a few built-in low-level merge drivers defined that can
	   be asked for via the merge attribute.

	   text
	       Usual 3-way file level merge for text files. Conflicted regions
	       are marked with conflict markers <<<<<<<, ======= and >>>>>>>.
	       The version from your branch appears before the ======= marker,
	       and the version from the merged branch appears after the
	       ======= marker.

	   binary
	       Keep the version from your branch in the work tree, but leave
	       the path in the conflicted state for the user to sort out.

	   union
	       Run 3-way file level merge for text files, but take lines from
	       both versions, instead of leaving conflict markers. This tends
	       to leave the added lines in the resulting file in random order
	       and the user should verify the result. Do not use this if you
	       do not understand the implications.

       Defining a custom merge driver
	   The definition of a merge driver is done in the .git/config file,
	   not in the gitattributes file, so strictly speaking this manual
	   page is a wrong place to talk about it. However...

	   To define a custom merge driver filfre, add a section to your
	   $GIT_DIR/config file (or $HOME/.gitconfig file) like this:

	       [merge "filfre"]
		       name = feel-free merge driver
		       driver = filfre %O %A %B
		       recursive = binary

	   The merge.*.name variable gives the driver a human-readable name.

	   The ‘merge.*.driver` variable’s value is used to construct a
	   command to run to merge ancestor’s version (%O), current version
	   (%A) and the other branches’ version (%B). These three tokens are
	   replaced with the names of temporary files that hold the contents
	   of these versions when the command line is built. Additionally, %L
	   will be replaced with the conflict marker size (see below).

	   The merge driver is expected to leave the result of the merge in
	   the file named with %A by overwriting it, and exit with zero status
	   if it managed to merge them cleanly, or non-zero if there were
	   conflicts.

	   The merge.*.recursive variable specifies what other merge driver to
	   use when the merge driver is called for an internal merge between
	   common ancestors, when there are more than one. When left
	   unspecified, the driver itself is used for both internal merge and
	   the final merge.

       conflict-marker-size
	   This attribute controls the length of conflict markers left in the
	   work tree file during a conflicted merge. Only setting to the value
	   to a positive integer has any meaningful effect.

	   For example, this line in .gitattributes can be used to tell the
	   merge machinery to leave much longer (instead of the usual
	   7-character-long) conflict markers when merging the file
	   Documentation/git-merge.txt results in a conflict.

	       Documentation/git-merge.txt     conflict-marker-size=32

   Checking whitespace errors
       whitespace
	   The core.whitespace configuration variable allows you to define
	   what diff and apply should consider whitespace errors for all paths
	   in the project (See git-config(1)). This attribute gives you finer
	   control per path.

	   Set
	       Notice all types of potential whitespace errors known to git.

	   Unset
	       Do not notice anything as error.

	   Unspecified
	       Use the value of core.whitespace configuration variable to
	       decide what to notice as error.

	   String
	       Specify a comma separate list of common whitespace problems to
	       notice in the same format as core.whitespace configuration
	       variable.

   Creating an archive
       export-ignore
	   Files and directories with the attribute export-ignore won’t be
	   added to archive files.

       export-subst
	   If the attribute export-subst is set for a file then git will
	   expand several placeholders when adding this file to an archive.
	   The expansion depends on the availability of a commit ID, i.e., if
	   git-archive(1) has been given a tree instead of a commit or a tag
	   then no replacement will be done. The placeholders are the same as
	   those for the option --pretty=format: of git-log(1), except that
	   they need to be wrapped like this: $Format:PLACEHOLDERS$ in the
	   file. E.g. the string $Format:%H$ will be replaced by the commit
	   hash.

   Packing objects
       delta
	   Delta compression will not be attempted for blobs for paths with
	   the attribute delta set to false.

   Viewing files in GUI tools
       encoding
	   The value of this attribute specifies the character encoding that
	   should be used by GUI tools (e.g. gitk(1) and git-gui(1)) to
	   display the contents of the relevant file. Note that due to
	   performance considerations gitk(1) does not use this attribute
	   unless you manually enable per-file encodings in its options.

	   If this attribute is not set or has an invalid value, the value of
	   the gui.encoding configuration variable is used instead (See git-
	   config(1)).

USING ATTRIBUTE MACROS
       You do not want any end-of-line conversions applied to, nor textual
       diffs produced for, any binary file you track. You would need to
       specify e.g.

	   *.jpg -crlf -diff

       but that may become cumbersome, when you have many attributes. Using
       attribute macros, you can specify groups of attributes set or unset at
       the same time. The system knows a built-in attribute macro, binary:

	   *.jpg binary

       which is equivalent to the above. Note that the attribute macros can
       only be "Set" (see the above example that sets "binary" macro as if it
       were an ordinary attribute --- setting it in turn unsets "crlf" and
       "diff").

DEFINING ATTRIBUTE MACROS
       Custom attribute macros can be defined only in the .gitattributes file
       at the toplevel (i.e. not in any subdirectory). The built-in attribute
       macro "binary" is equivalent to:

	   [attr]binary -diff -crlf

EXAMPLE
       If you have these three gitattributes file:

	   (in $GIT_DIR/info/attributes)

	   a*	   foo !bar -baz

	   (in .gitattributes)
	   abc	   foo bar baz

	   (in t/.gitattributes)
	   ab*	   merge=filfre
	   abc	   -foo -bar
	   *.c	   frotz

       the attributes given to path t/abc are computed as follows:

	1. By examining t/.gitattributes (which is in the same directory as
	   the path in question), git finds that the first line matches.
	   merge attribute is set. It also finds that the second line matches,
	   and attributes foo and bar are unset.

	2. Then it examines .gitattributes (which is in the parent directory),
	   and finds that the first line matches, but t/.gitattributes file
	   already decided how merge, foo and bar attributes should be given
	   to this path, so it leaves foo and bar unset. Attribute baz is set.

	3. Finally it examines $GIT_DIR/info/attributes. This file is used to
	   override the in-tree settings. The first line is a match, and foo
	   is set, bar is reverted to unspecified state, and baz is unset.

       As the result, the attributes assignment to t/abc becomes:

	   foo	   set to true
	   bar	   unspecified
	   baz	   set to false
	   merge   set to string value "filfre"
	   frotz   unspecified

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 1.7.0.4			  12/18/2010		      GITATTRIBUTES(5)
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