Can git automatically switch between spaces and tabs?

Question

I use tabs for indentation in my python programs, but I would like to collaborate (using git) with people who use spaces instead.

Is there a way for git to automatically convert between spaces and tabs (say, 4 spaces = 1 tab) on pushing/fetching? (similar to the CR/LF conversion)

Answer 1

Yes, one potential solution is to use a git attribute filter driver (see also GitPro book), to define a smudge/clean mechanism.

That way:

• each time you checkout some files of your repo, spaces can be converted in tabs,
• but when you check-in (and push and publish), those same files are stored back using only spaces.

You can declare this filter driver (named here 'tabspace') in the .git/info/attributes (for a filter applied to all files within the Git repo), with the following content:

*.py  filter=tabspace

Now run the commands:

git config --global filter.tabspace.smudge 'script_to_make_tabs'
git config --global filter.tabspace.clean 'script_to_make_spaces'

See Olivier's answer for a concrete working example of such a smudge/clean set of instructions.

Answer 2

Here is the complete solution:

In your repository, add a file .git/info/attributes which contains:

*.py  filter=tabspace

Now run the commands:

git config --global filter.tabspace.smudge 'unexpand --tabs=4 --first-only'
git config --global filter.tabspace.clean 'expand --tabs=4 --initial'

You may now check out all the files of your project. You can do that with:

git checkout --force

and all the python files will now have tabs instead of spaces.