Question

I’ve got a Git repository that has some files with DOS format (\r\n line endings). I would like to just run the files through dos2unix (which would change all files to UNIX format, with \n line endings), but how badly would this affect history, and is it recommended at all?

I assume that the standard is to always use UNIX line endings for source-controlled files, and optionally switch to OS-specific line endings locally?

Answer 1

The approach you’ll have to use depends on how public your repository is.

If you don’t mind or care about changing all SHAs because you’re more or less the only one using it but want to have this issue sorted out for all times, you can run a git filter-branch and apply dos2unix to all files in each commit. (If you’re sharing the repository, everyone else needs more or less to completely renew it, so this is potentially dangerous.)

So the better option and also an easier way would be to change it only in the current heads. This means that your past commits still have \r\n endings but unless you’re doing much cherry-picking from the past this should not be a problem. The diff tools might complain a bit more often, of course, but normally you’ll only diff with commits in the vicinity, so this issue resolves itself as the commits accumulate.

And UNIX line endings are standard, you’re correct about that. Best approach is to setup your editor to only write these endings even on windows. Otherwise, there is also a autocrlf setting which you can use.

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Addition to the history rewriting part:

Last time I did the same, I used the following command to change all files to unix endings.

#!/bin/bash
all2dos() { find * -exec dos2unix {} \; }
export -f all2dos
git filter-branch -f --tree-filter 'all2dos' --tag-name-filter cat --prune-empty -- --all