Changing branches in git results in changed files

Question

When I am switching between branches in git, I am seeing that files are changed even though no updates have been made. This has just started happening recently.

$ git status
# On branch dev
nothing to commit (working directory clean)


$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'


$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#       modified:   App.Core/ViewModels/CriteriaViewModel.cs
#       modified:   App.Core/ViewModels/UserManagement/AccountTagsViewModel.cs
#       modified:   App.Core/ViewModels/UserManagement/TagViewModel.cs
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

These are files that I changed on the dev branch, but then added and committed. Any ideas as to what I'm doing that would cause this?

Answer 1

You can check if the difference is in the eol (end of line) characters in those "changed" files.

If it is, make sure your core.autocrlf is set to false:

git config core.autocrlf false

That would avoid any automatic conversion on checkout.

See "git replacing LF with CRLF" for more.

If you need to enforce a consistent eol, use .gitattributes directives, as in "Fixing the line-endings in a Git repository using the .gitattributes file".