convert: add 'working-tree-encoding' attribute

Git recognizes files encoded with ASCII or one of its supersets (e.g.
UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1) as text files. All other encodings are usually
interpreted as binary and consequently built-in Git text processing
tools (e.g. 'git diff') as well as most Git web front ends do not
visualize the content.

Add an attribute to tell Git what encoding the user has defined for a
given file. If the content is added to the index, then Git reencodes
the content to a canonical UTF-8 representation. On checkout Git will
reverse this operation.

Signed-off-by: Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 80 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
index 30687de81..31a4f9284 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
@@ -272,6 +272,86 @@ few exceptions.  Even though...
   catch potential problems early, safety triggers.
 
 
+`working-tree-encoding`
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Git recognizes files encoded in ASCII or one of its supersets (e.g.
+UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ...) as text files. Files encoded in certain other
+encodings (e.g. UTF-16) are interpreted as binary and consequently
+built-in Git text processing tools (e.g. 'git diff') as well as most Git
+web front ends do not visualize the contents of these files by default.
+
+In these cases you can tell Git the encoding of a file in the working
+directory with the `working-tree-encoding` attribute. If a file with this
+attribute is added to Git, then Git reencodes the content from the
+specified encoding to UTF-8. Finally, Git stores the UTF-8 encoded
+content in its internal data structure (called "the index"). On checkout
+the content is reencoded back to the specified encoding.
+
+Please note that using the `working-tree-encoding` attribute may have a
+number of pitfalls:
+
+- Alternative Git implementations (e.g. JGit or libgit2) and older Git
+  versions (as of March 2018) do not support the `working-tree-encoding`
+  attribute. If you decide to use the `working-tree-encoding` attribute
+  in your repository, then it is strongly recommended to ensure that all
+  clients working with the repository support it.
+
+  For example, Microsoft Visual Studio resources files (`*.rc`) or
+  PowerShell script files (`*.ps1`) are sometimes encoded in UTF-16.
+  If you declare `*.ps1` as files as UTF-16 and you add `foo.ps1` with
+  a `working-tree-encoding` enabled Git client, then `foo.ps1` will be
+  stored as UTF-8 internally. A client without `working-tree-encoding`
+  support will checkout `foo.ps1` as UTF-8 encoded file. This will
+  typically cause trouble for the users of this file.
+
+  If a Git client, that does not support the `working-tree-encoding`
+  attribute, adds a new file `bar.ps1`, then `bar.ps1` will be
+  stored "as-is" internally (in this example probably as UTF-16).
+  A client with `working-tree-encoding` support will interpret the
+  internal contents as UTF-8 and try to convert it to UTF-16 on checkout.
+  That operation will fail and cause an error.
+
+- Reencoding content requires resources that might slow down certain
+  Git operations (e.g 'git checkout' or 'git add').
+
+Use the `working-tree-encoding` attribute only if you cannot store a file
+in UTF-8 encoding and if you want Git to be able to process the content
+as text.
+
+As an example, use the following attributes if your '*.ps1' files are
+UTF-16 encoded with byte order mark (BOM) and you want Git to perform
+automatic line ending conversion based on your platform.
+
+------------------------
+*.ps1		text working-tree-encoding=UTF-16
+------------------------
+
+Use the following attributes if your '*.ps1' files are UTF-16 little
+endian encoded without BOM and you want Git to use Windows line endings
+in the working directory. Please note, it is highly recommended to
+explicitly define the line endings with `eol` if the `working-tree-encoding`
+attribute is used to avoid ambiguity.
+
+------------------------
+*.ps1		text working-tree-encoding=UTF-16LE eol=CRLF
+------------------------
+
+You can get a list of all available encodings on your platform with the
+following command:
+
+------------------------
+iconv --list
+------------------------
+
+If you do not know the encoding of a file, then you can use the `file`
+command to guess the encoding:
+
+------------------------
+file foo.ps1
+------------------------
+
+
 `ident`
 ^^^^^^^