Resolving Line Ending Conflicts in Git: A Cross-Platform Guide

Learn how to effectively handle line ending differences between different operating systems in Git. This guide will explain why line endings matter and provide solutions to ensure consistent line endings in your commits.

Handling Line Endings in Git Across Platforms

Different operating systems use different characters to represent the end of a line. For example, on GNU/Linux and Mac OS, the line-feed (LF) character is used as the line ending, while on Windows, a combination of line-feed and carriage-return (LFCR) is used.

Why This Matters in Git

When working across different platforms, these differences in line endings can lead to unnecessary changes in the Git repository. To avoid these, you can configure Git to ensure consistent line endings in your commits.

Git Configuration for Windows

On a Windows system, you can configure the Git client to convert line endings to CRLF format during checkout, and convert them back to LF format when committing. This ensures compatibility with repositories shared across different platforms.

[david@CentOS project]$ git config --global core.autocrlf true

Git Configuration for GNU/Linux or Mac OS

For GNU/Linux or Mac OS systems, you can configure Git to convert line endings from CRLF to LF during the checkout process. This will keep the line endings consistent with the native format of these platforms.

[david@CentOS project]$ git config --global core.autocrlf input