These two sentences are confusing because the description of the text attribute sounds exactly the same as the description of the text=auto attribute: "Setting the text attribute on a path enables end-of-line normalization" "When text is set to "auto", the path is marked for automatic end-of-line conversion" Unless the reader is already familiar with the two variants, there's a high probability that they will think that "end-of-line normalization" is the same thing as "automatic end-of-line conversion". It's also confusing that the explanation of how end-of-line conversion works is in the paragraph for text=auto even though it applies equally to the text attribute which is described earlier. On top of that, "When the file has been committed with CRLF, no conversion is done" implies that normalization is only suppressed if the file has been committed. In fact, running `git add` on a CRLF file, adding the text attribute to the file, and running `git add` again does not do anything to the line endings either. Rephrase the documentation of text and text=auto to be clear about how they are the same, how they are different, and in what cases normalization is performed. Signed-off-by: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@xxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/gitattributes.txt | 16 +++++++++------- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt index 39bfbca1ff..6db4ecd794 100644 --- a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt +++ b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt @@ -131,9 +131,12 @@ linkgit:git-config[1]). Set:: - Setting the `text` attribute on a path enables end-of-line - normalization and marks the path as a text file. End-of-line - conversion takes place without guessing the content type. + Setting the `text` attribute on a path marks the path as a text + file, which enables end-of-line normalization: When a matching file + is added to the index, even if it has CRLF line endings in the + working directory, the file is stored in Git with LF line endings. + However, if the file was already in Git with CRLF endings, no + conversion is done. Unset:: @@ -142,10 +145,9 @@ Unset:: Set to string value "auto":: - When `text` is set to "auto", the path is marked for automatic - end-of-line conversion. If Git decides that the content is - text, its line endings are converted to LF on checkin. - When the file has been committed with CRLF, no conversion is done. + When text is set to "auto", Git decides by itself whether the file + is text or binary. If it is text, line endings are converted as + described above. If it is binary, they are not. Unspecified:: -- 2.40.0
