[fpc-devel] GIT and binary files.

[mailinglists at geldenhuys.co.uk]

On 2026-04-04 19:02, Marco van de Voort via fpc-devel wrote:
> Depending on EOL detection it seems.

No, not quite. For a start, it totally ignores file extensions - they 
have no affect on what git does it this regard. It looks for NUL (00) 
bytes, by scanning the first 8000 bytes. Text files almost never contain 
a null byte. Binary files, like images, compiled executable, compressed 
archives etc, frequently contain 00 bytes as part of their data 
structure. It also does a high-density check for non-printable 
characters. If git is still not 100% sure, it will default to treating 
it as a binary, so as to avoid corrupting it during line-ending 
conversions.

It's a lot more advanced to what what most people think. :-)

>> A git config file can also define how file extensions should be 
>> treated. I'm not near a computer to see what FPC Source repo has 
>> configured.
>> 
> In the toplevel .gitattributes (is that valid for the whole repo?)


Yes.

But sub-directories can override values, if they have their own 
.gitattributes file. Same behaviour as the .gitignore file.


Regards,
   - Graeme -