Disable git autocrlf

I'm not a regular Windows user, but if I were forced to use it for a while, WSL would be almost mandatory. Good to have this note handy (by Ryan Harrison).

If you're on Windows, Git has been silently messing with your line endings since the day you installed it. The culprit is core.autocrlf, enabled by default.

git config --global core.autocrlf false

What core.autocrlf does¶

Windows has historically used CRLF (\r\n) as its line ending character, while Linux and macOS use plain LF (\n). With autocrlf true (the default on Windows):

• On checkout: Git converts LF line endings in the repository to CRLF in your working directory
• On commit: Git converts CRLF back to LF before storing the file

In theory, your local files always have Windows-style line endings and the repository stays clean with Unix-style endings. In practice, it's a constant source of problems.

Why it's a bad default¶

WSL makes it worse. Your Linux environment expects LF line endings. Windows Git has helpfully checked out everything with CRLF. The result: every script and config file has a stray \r at the end of every line, causing silent failures. And if you haven't seen this warning, you've probably started ignoring it:

warning: LF will be replaced by CRLF in some-file.sh.
The file will have its original line endings in your working directory

Modern editors handle LF just fine. The original argument was that Notepad couldn't handle LF-only files — which was true in 2003. Notepad has supported LF line endings since Windows 10 (2018). VS Code, Sublime, Vim, IntelliJ, Notepad++ — they've all handled it fine for even longer.

The conversion is lossy in practice. Binary files can get corrupted if Git misidentifies them as text. If some people on a team have autocrlf true and others have it false, you'll end up with commits that are just line ending changes.

The fix: disable it and use .gitattributes¶

git config --global core.autocrlf false

From then on, Git leaves your line endings exactly as they are — no silent conversions. For teams, a .gitattributes file in the repository is a much better approach, since it applies the same rules for everyone regardless of their local config.

Use LF everywhere, configure your editor to save with LF by default. Don't think about it again (until you change machines).

Original source: Git - Disable autocrlf (Ryan Harrison)