git - trim whitespace

Question

I\'ve accidentally put some whitespace in my initial commit - it shows up red in git diff --color. What\'s the best way to get rid of the existing whitespace and ho

Answer 1

core.whitespace instructs git to flag certain whitespace problems:

• trailing-space warns about whitespace at the end of a line or at the end of a file
• space-before-tab warns when there is a space before a tab used for indentation

apply.whitespace is used when applying a patch. It checks for whitespace errors (the ones listed above, in core.whitespace) and applies the patch after attempting to fix them (i.e., remove them).

These options go in ~/.gitconfig -- that is, a .gitconfig file at the root of your user's home directory (typically /home/user/.gitconfig on Linux, /Users/user/.gitconfig on Mac OS X, and I don't know where on Windows but I suppose somewhere in C:\Documents and Settings\user).