Force LF Line Endings with eol=lf

Forcing LF with eol=lf

While text=auto normalizes line endings in the repository, it still converts to CRLF on Windows during checkout. Some files must always use LF regardless of the developer's platform — shell scripts, Makefiles, and certain configuration files will break with CRLF endings.

The Directive

*.sh    text eol=lf
*.bash  text eol=lf
Makefile text eol=lf
*.yml   text eol=lf
*.yaml  text eol=lf

The text eol=lf combination does two things:

1. text — marks the file as a text file for normalization
2. eol=lf — forces LF endings even in the working directory on Windows

Why Shell Scripts Need LF

Unix shells (bash, sh, zsh) interpret \r (carriage return) as part of the command, leading to errors like:

/bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

The ^M is the carriage return character from CRLF. By forcing eol=lf, Windows developers will always get LF endings for these files, preventing this class of bugs.

Files That Commonly Require LF

File type	Why
*.sh, *.bash	Shell interpreters require LF
Makefile	Make requires LF for recipe lines
*.yml, *.yaml	Some YAML parsers are LF-sensitive
.env	Docker and dotenv may fail with CRLF
Dockerfile	Docker build can fail with CRLF
.editorconfig	Convention for editor configs

Combining with text=auto

* text=auto
*.sh text eol=lf
*.bat text eol=crlf

The more specific rules override the global text=auto for matching file patterns.