Re: Checking in files with trailing white space

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Lars.

On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 07:50:13PM +0100, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:

> >> > I'm adding test cases for the shr HTML rendering, and in some of the
> >> > tests there should really be trailing white space in the result files.
> >> > Is there a way to say that the test/data/shr directory should be allowed
> >> > to have trailing spaces in our git/checkin thing?

> >> Never mind; found it...

> > Would some kind soul please tell me the recipe.  I've just merged master
> > into a nine-month old branch, and I get lots of these whitespace errors
> > when I try to commit the merge.

> Hm...  sorry, I've forgotten again.  But I don't think what you're
> seeing is related to what I was talking about.  The git/checkin script
> refuses to check in files with whitespace at the end of lines, while it
> sounds like you have something different going on...

No, that was precisely my problem.  The files with the trailing spaces
(there must have been ~30 - 100 of them) might well have been the test
files you created, as reported in the paragraph above.

However, this absolute prohibition on trailing spaces is fascistic.
Some files (for example, test files) have essential trailing spaces in
them, and for git absolutely to refuse to commit them I think is
unacceptable.

I eventually found what was causing the problem, although it cost me a
precious 2 - 3 hours out of my Emacs hacking time.  :-(  This problem
was the last line in ..../.git/hooks/pre-commit, which looked like this:

    exec git diff-index --check --cached HEAD --

.  Do you see "trailing spaces" in there anywhere?  No, neither did I,
and the fact that there's no comment to say so got me somewhat angry
after I'd found out.  Negligent obfuscation, particularly given the dire
state of git's documentation.

Anyhow, I've commented out that line, and all the files with trailing
spaces got committed OK.  It would be nice to get a warning along the
lines of "The following files contain trailing whitespace, do you wish
to proceed with the commit?  [Y/n]: ....".

> -- 
> (domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
>    bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).