Can I make git recognize a UTF-16 file as text?
character-encoding, diff, git, unicode, utf-16
Solution
I've been struggling with this problem for a while, and just discovered (for me) a perfect solution:
$ git config --global diff.tool vimdiff # or merge.tool to get merging too!
$ git difftool commit1 commit2
`git difftool` takes the same arguments as `git diff` would, but runs a diff program of your choice instead of the built-in GNU `diff`. So pick a multibyte-aware diff (in my case, `vim` in diff mode) and just use `git difftool` instead of `git diff`.
Find "difftool" too long to type? No problem:
$ git config --global alias.dt difftool
$ git dt commit1 commit2
Git rocks.
Problem
I'm tracking a Virtual PC virtual machine file (*.vmc) in git, and after making a change git identified the file as binary and wouldn't diff it for me. I discovered that the file was encoded in UTF-16. Can git be taught to recognize that this file is text and handle it appropriately? I'm using git under Cygwin, with core.autocrlf set to false. I could use mSysGit or git under UNIX, if necessary.