gitfaq: give advice on using eol attribute in gitattributes

In the FAQ, we tell people how to use the text attribute, but we fail to
explain what to do with the eol attribute.  As we ourselves have
noticed, most shell implementations do not care for carriage returns,
and as such, people will practically always want them to use LF endings.
Similar things can be said for batch files on Windows, except with CRLF
endings.

Since these are common things to have in a repository, let's help users
make a good decision by recommending that they use the gitattributes
file to correctly check out the endings.

In addition, let's correct the cross-reference to this question, which
originally referred to "the following entry", even though a new entry
has been inserted in between.  The cross-reference notation should
prevent this from occurring and provide a link in formats, such as HTML,
which support that.

Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

diff --git a/Documentation/gitfaq.txt b/Documentation/gitfaq.txt
index e4125b11783eb3cfc4f55d9551a24a4658c395a8..058ef32a97c56b70449d3e1e2d5a6646eed31df0 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/gitfaq.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitfaq.txt
@@ -393,8 +393,9 @@ I'm on Windows and git diff shows my files as having a `^M` at the end.::
 +
 You can store the files in the repository with Unix line endings and convert
 them automatically to your platform's line endings.  To do that, set the
-configuration option `core.eol` to `native` and see the following entry for
-information about how to configure files as text or binary.
+configuration option `core.eol` to `native` and see
+<<recommended-storage-settings,the question on recommended storage settings>>
+for information about how to configure files as text or binary.
 +
 You can also control this behavior with the `core.whitespace` setting if you
 don't wish to remove the carriage returns from your line endings.
@@ -456,14 +457,26 @@ references, URLs, and hashes stored in the repository.
 +
 We also recommend setting a linkgit:gitattributes[5] file to explicitly mark
 which files are text and which are binary.  If you want Git to guess, you can
-set the attribute `text=auto`.  For example, the following might be appropriate
-in some projects:
+set the attribute `text=auto`.
++
+With text files, Git will generally ensure that LF endings are used in the
+repository.  The `core.autocrlf` and `core.eol` configuration variables specify
+what line-ending convention is followed when any text file is checked out.  You
+can also use the `eol` attribute (e.g., `eol=crlf`) to override which files get
+what line-ending treatment.
++
+For example, generally shell files must have LF endings and batch files must
+have CRLF endings, so the following might be appropriate in some projects:
 +
 ----
 # By default, guess.
 *      text=auto
 # Mark all C files as text.
 *.c    text
+# Ensure all shell files have LF endings and all batch files have CRLF
+# endings in the working tree and both have LF in the repo.
+*.sh text eol=lf
+*.bat text eol=crlf
 # Mark all JPEG files as binary.
 *.jpg  binary
 ----