Merge branch 'ls/checkout-encoding'

The new "checkout-encoding" attribute can ask Git to convert the
contents to the specified encoding when checking out to the working
tree (and the other way around when checking in).

* ls/checkout-encoding:
  convert: add round trip check based on 'core.checkRoundtripEncoding'
  convert: add tracing for 'working-tree-encoding' attribute
  convert: check for detectable errors in UTF encodings
  convert: add 'working-tree-encoding' attribute
  utf8: add function to detect a missing UTF-16/32 BOM
  utf8: add function to detect prohibited UTF-16/32 BOM
  utf8: teach same_encoding() alternative UTF encoding names
  strbuf: add a case insensitive starts_with()
  strbuf: add xstrdup_toupper()
  strbuf: remove unnecessary NUL assignment in xstrdup_tolower()

2 files changed, 94 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index cb4c93f74a..8213c1236b 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -530,6 +530,12 @@ core.autocrlf::
 	This variable can be set to 'input',
 	in which case no output conversion is performed.
 
+core.checkRoundtripEncoding::
+	A comma and/or whitespace separated list of encodings that Git
+	performs UTF-8 round trip checks on if they are used in an
+	`working-tree-encoding` attribute (see linkgit:gitattributes[5]).
+	The default value is `SHIFT-JIS`.
+
 core.symlinks::
 	If false, symbolic links are checked out as small plain files that
 	contain the link text. linkgit:git-update-index[1] and
diff --git a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
index 1094fe2b5b..ee210be3ec 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
@@ -279,6 +279,94 @@ few exceptions.  Even though...
   catch potential problems early, safety triggers.
 
 
+`working-tree-encoding`
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Git recognizes files encoded in ASCII or one of its supersets (e.g.
+UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ...) as text files. Files encoded in certain other
+encodings (e.g. UTF-16) are interpreted as binary and consequently
+built-in Git text processing tools (e.g. 'git diff') as well as most Git
+web front ends do not visualize the contents of these files by default.
+
+In these cases you can tell Git the encoding of a file in the working
+directory with the `working-tree-encoding` attribute. If a file with this
+attribute is added to Git, then Git reencodes the content from the
+specified encoding to UTF-8. Finally, Git stores the UTF-8 encoded
+content in its internal data structure (called "the index"). On checkout
+the content is reencoded back to the specified encoding.
+
+Please note that using the `working-tree-encoding` attribute may have a
+number of pitfalls:
+
+- Alternative Git implementations (e.g. JGit or libgit2) and older Git
+  versions (as of March 2018) do not support the `working-tree-encoding`
+  attribute. If you decide to use the `working-tree-encoding` attribute
+  in your repository, then it is strongly recommended to ensure that all
+  clients working with the repository support it.
+
+  For example, Microsoft Visual Studio resources files (`*.rc`) or
+  PowerShell script files (`*.ps1`) are sometimes encoded in UTF-16.
+  If you declare `*.ps1` as files as UTF-16 and you add `foo.ps1` with
+  a `working-tree-encoding` enabled Git client, then `foo.ps1` will be
+  stored as UTF-8 internally. A client without `working-tree-encoding`
+  support will checkout `foo.ps1` as UTF-8 encoded file. This will
+  typically cause trouble for the users of this file.
+
+  If a Git client, that does not support the `working-tree-encoding`
+  attribute, adds a new file `bar.ps1`, then `bar.ps1` will be
+  stored "as-is" internally (in this example probably as UTF-16).
+  A client with `working-tree-encoding` support will interpret the
+  internal contents as UTF-8 and try to convert it to UTF-16 on checkout.
+  That operation will fail and cause an error.
+
+- Reencoding content to non-UTF encodings can cause errors as the
+  conversion might not be UTF-8 round trip safe. If you suspect your
+  encoding to not be round trip safe, then add it to
+  `core.checkRoundtripEncoding` to make Git check the round trip
+  encoding (see linkgit:git-config[1]). SHIFT-JIS (Japanese character
+  set) is known to have round trip issues with UTF-8 and is checked by
+  default.
+
+- Reencoding content requires resources that might slow down certain
+  Git operations (e.g 'git checkout' or 'git add').
+
+Use the `working-tree-encoding` attribute only if you cannot store a file
+in UTF-8 encoding and if you want Git to be able to process the content
+as text.
+
+As an example, use the following attributes if your '*.ps1' files are
+UTF-16 encoded with byte order mark (BOM) and you want Git to perform
+automatic line ending conversion based on your platform.
+
+------------------------
+*.ps1		text working-tree-encoding=UTF-16
+------------------------
+
+Use the following attributes if your '*.ps1' files are UTF-16 little
+endian encoded without BOM and you want Git to use Windows line endings
+in the working directory. Please note, it is highly recommended to
+explicitly define the line endings with `eol` if the `working-tree-encoding`
+attribute is used to avoid ambiguity.
+
+------------------------
+*.ps1		text working-tree-encoding=UTF-16LE eol=CRLF
+------------------------
+
+You can get a list of all available encodings on your platform with the
+following command:
+
+------------------------
+iconv --list
+------------------------
+
+If you do not know the encoding of a file, then you can use the `file`
+command to guess the encoding:
+
+------------------------
+file foo.ps1
+------------------------
+
+
 `ident`
 ^^^^^^^