Re: Magit reports binary files that don't exist

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 11:06 PM, Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com> wrote:

> Its relatively new for me too, and I'm managing hundreds of .el files too
> for quite some time now.

Open up the log in gitk. Find a file that is detected as binary.
Right-click it in the bottom right frame, select “Highlight this
only”. This will highlight all commits where this file is modified
with bold in the top frame. (Why gitk and not magit? Because gitk
shows you a list of commits and the diff in one window, and you can
just press the down arrow until you hit the commit you’re looking for.
Magit only shows you the list of commits and you have to press Enter
or Space on each in order to see diffs.)

Now follow the trail. Several topmost commits will report that the
file is binary and that it changed. Eventually, though, you will find
the first commit that introduced binariness to this file.

Check out that commit. Look at the file. Maybe do a ‘diff -au’ against
its previous version (when it was still text). Look what changed.
Think which specific change could make a text file binary.