Question

I’m just getting started with git and am running into a problem when attempting to clone a respository from github. There are several binary files (.exe and .dll) contained in the repo; when I make a clone of this on my local machine none of these binaries are valid (as far as windows is concerned). Attempting to execute them results in the following message being displayed:

‘XXX is not a valid Win32 application’

I believe I have everything setup properly, (using GitExtensions, if that’s relevant) – but I can’t seem to get this issue resolved.

Any help much appreciated!

Edit:

This is my current .gitconfig – if relevant:

[merge]
    tool = kdiff3
[mergetool "kdiff3"]
    path = c:/Program Files (x86)/KDiff3/kdiff3.exe
[diff]
    guitool = kdiff3
[difftool "kdiff3"]
    path = c:/Program Files (x86)/KDiff3/kdiff3.exe
[core]
    editor = \"C:/Program Files (x86)/GitExtensions/GitExtensions.exe\" fileeditor
    autocrlf = true

Answer 1

You may have fallen foul of line endings fix up’s – and it not treating the files as binary:

For example, if you want all *.foo
files to be treated as binary files
you can have this line in
.gitattributes:

*.foo -crlf -diff -merge 

This will mean all files with a .foo extension
will not have carriage return/line
feed translations done, won’t be
diffed and merges will result in
conflicts leaving the original file
untouched.

Source info:
About the line endings: http://help.github.com/dealing-with-lineendings/

About Binary files: http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/09/git-binary-files-and-cherry-picking.html .