Broken Unity project after git clone

Question

I have a Unity project (github link), that doesn't work after being cloned. Even though the files are there, they have incorrect contents. For example .png files are replaced with text:

version https://git-lfs.github.com/spec/v1 oid sha256:089f8198df161233681006c4243f6d6babb2e125062a21ea727d0d6c97889d26 size 1035

Some DLLs that I have from external asset packages (for example DOTween), are also probably not stored correctly, because the compiler complains about undeclared namespaces.

Assets/External Dependencies/Demigiant/DOTween/Examples/Basics.cs(3,7): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `DG' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

UPDATE: Actually, the dlls are not even there. Why? They're not part of the gitignore.

I have made sure to set Version Control Mode to Visible Meta Files and Asset Serialization Mode to Force Text.

I tried moving the project to a new directory, deleting the .git folder, deleting Library, remaking everything (reopening with Unity, and then git init), and pushing to a new repo. The new repo has the exact same issues as the previous one.

I'm using the default .gitignore for Unity

And the following .gitattributes (to enable LFS):

# 3D models
*.3dm filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.3ds filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.blend filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.c4d filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.collada filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.dae filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.dxf filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.fbx filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.jas filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.lws filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.lxo filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.ma filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.max filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.mb filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.obj filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.ply filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.skp filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.stl filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.ztl filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
# Audio
*.aif filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.aiff filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.it filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.mod filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.mp3 filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.ogg filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.s3m filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.wav filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.xm filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
# Fonts
*.otf filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.ttf filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
# Images
*.bmp filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.exr filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.gif filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.hdr filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.iff filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.jpeg filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.jpg filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.pict filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.png filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.psd filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.tga filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.tif filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
*.tiff filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
# Collapse Unity-generated files on GitHub
*.asset linguist-generated
*.mat linguist-generated
*.meta linguist-generated
*.prefab linguist-generated
*.unity linguist-generated

---

UPDATE:

After further investigation, it seems that the png files, get overwritten (by unity?) when the project gets opened after cloning. They exist correctly in the remote repository. The external dlls on the other hand do not get uploaded at all.

Answer 1

Your .gitattributes file is wrong.

*.png filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text

Text? TEXT? Why on earth would you want to treat .png files as text? Same goes for most of those other attributes.

Looking at my own .gitattributes file, I have this:
(Yes, most of the lines are comments)

###############################################################################
# Set default behavior to automatically normalize line endings.
###############################################################################
* text=auto
###############################################################################
# Set default behavior for command prompt diff.
#
# This is need for earlier builds of msysgit that does not have it on by
# default for csharp files.
# Note: This is only used by command line
###############################################################################
#*.cs     diff=csharp

###############################################################################
# Set the merge driver for project and solution files
#
# Merging from the command prompt will add diff markers to the files if there
# are conflicts (Merging from VS is not affected by the settings below, in VS
# the diff markers are never inserted). Diff markers may cause the following 
# file extensions to fail to load in VS. An alternative would be to treat
# these files as binary and thus will always conflict and require user
# intervention with every merge. To do so, just uncomment the entries below
###############################################################################
#*.sln       merge=binary
#*.csproj    merge=binary
#*.vbproj    merge=binary
#*.vcxproj   merge=binary
#*.vcproj    merge=binary
#*.dbproj    merge=binary
#*.fsproj    merge=binary
#*.lsproj    merge=binary
#*.wixproj   merge=binary
#*.modelproj merge=binary
#*.sqlproj   merge=binary
#*.wwaproj   merge=binary

###############################################################################
# behavior for image files
#
# image files are treated as binary by default.
###############################################################################
#*.jpg   binary
#*.png   binary
#*.gif   binary

###############################################################################
# diff behavior for common document formats
# 
# Convert binary document formats to text before diffing them. This feature
# is only available from the command line. Turn it on by uncommenting the 
# entries below.
###############################################################################
#*.doc   diff=astextplain
#*.DOC   diff=astextplain
#*.docx  diff=astextplain
#*.DOCX  diff=astextplain
#*.dot   diff=astextplain
#*.DOT   diff=astextplain
#*.pdf   diff=astextplain
#*.PDF   diff=astextplain
#*.rtf   diff=astextplain
#*.RTF   diff=astextplain

This file was created automatically for me when I created the git repository through the GitHub desktop application. I've heard that it's "not very good" but I've found that it does what I need it to. Namely not get in the way of making commits and pushing to GitHub.