Re: Use of new .gitattributes working-tree-encoding attribute across different platform types

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 02:44:47AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 27, 2018 at 07:54:52AM +0000, Steve Groeger wrote:
> > We have common code that is supposed to be usable across different platforms and hence different file encodings. With the full support of the working-tree-encoding in the latest version of git on all platforms, how do we have files converted to different encodings on different platforms?
> > I could not find anything that would allow us to say 'if platform = z/OS then encoding=EBCDIC else encoding=ASCII'.   Is there a way this can be done?
> 
> I don't believe there is such functionality.  Git doesn't have
> attributes that are conditional on the platform in that sort of way.
> You could use a smudge/clean filter and adjust the filter for the
> platform you're on, which might meet your needs.

We do have prior art in the line-ending code, though. There the
attributes say either that a file needs a specific line-ending type
(which is relatively rare), or that it should follow the system type,
which is then set separately in the config.

I have the impression that the working-tree-encoding stuff was made to
handle the first case, but not the second. It doesn't seem like an
outrageous thing to eventually add.

(Though I agree that clean/smudge filters would work, and can even
implement the existing working-tree-encoding feature, albeit less
efficiently and conveniently).

-Peff