Subject: Re: Script for handling UTF-16 files

From: Karsten Blees <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:59:56 +0200

Am 10.04.2013 01:47, schrieb Ken Ismert:
> 
> I bumped into the UTF-16 display problem with Git Extensions running on top of msysGit. After lots of searching and experimenting, I came up with a solution that works for me.
> 
> Note: Please see questions below.
> 
> This method is for MSysGit 1.8.1, and is tested on Windows XP. I use Git Extensions 2.44, but since the changes are at the Git level, they should work for Git Gui as well. Steps:

There has been a discussion about handling UTF-16 on the git ML a while back, see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/159708

As suggested there, I would try to use a clean/smudge filter (i.e. store UTF-16 files as UTF-8 in the repository and convert back to UTF-16 on checkout). That way git can treat your UTF-16 files as text in most cases (i.e. you can merge them, git-grep works, gitattributes work (eol-conversion, ident-replacement, built-in diff patterns...)).

If you use a textconv filter, UTF-16 content will be treated as binary by most git operations.

There's also an 'encoding' attribute and a 'gui.encoding' setting which in theory should solve your issue (i.e. specify encoding of files for display by GUI tools). I don't know if Git Extensions supports that, or whether its supposed to work for binary files at all.

> 3) Modify the global ~/Git/etc/gitconfig or your local ~/.git/config file, and add these lines:
> 
>     [diff "astextutf16"]
>         textconv = astextutf16

Why not simply "textconv = iconv -f utf-16 -t utf-8", without the extra script?

> c) I had success with iconv, but is there any built-in UTF-16 to UTF-8 converter that ships with msysGit?

There are ready-to-use UTF-conversion functions in the codebase, but these are not accessible as a git command or built-in filter.

> As a quick fix, how hard would it be to add a 'utf16' diff filter, similar to cpp or |csharp? Or is this simply the wrong place to put in a work-around?

As described above, I think a diff filter is not the right tool for the job. The only universal format for text content that works reasonably well with established text-based technologies (merge algorithms, regex etc.) is UTF-8. If we want to benefit from these technologies, git should store text files as UTF-8 and convert from / to platform-specific formats on checkin / checkout or for display.

Bye,
Karsten

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