Git says “Binary files a… and b… differ” on for *.reg files

Question

Is there a way to force Git in to treating .reg files as text? I am using Git to track my windows registry tweaks and Windows uses .reg for these files

Answer 1

Create one utf16toascii.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
data = open(sys.argv[-1]).read()
ascii = data.decode('utf-16').encode('ascii', 'replace')
sys.stdout.write(ascii)

Then in bash do:

$ echo "*.reg diff=utf16strings" >> .gitattributes
$ git config --global diff.utf16strings.textconv /path/to/utf16toascii.py

And you're good to diff registry files, as well as Xcode .strings files, or any other utf-16 file.