About line endings

Start by reading the repository's current .gitattributes and the line-ending change from PR 43. Compare the proposed -text, filter/.gitconfig, and GitHub Action approaches, then verify the selected behavior for VBA files obtained through cloning, archive downloads, and GitHub's raw-file download. Done means the chosen approach is documented and VBA files import correctly in the VBE.

I notice that in this PR https://github.com/Beakerboy/VBA-SQL-Library/pull/43, you added a .gitattributes file that makes it so that line endings are converted to LF in the Git index.

I've personally read in a few places that it was a good practice as well, but I've recently come to the conclusion that normalizing line endings to LF for VBA files doesn't actually bring any value because GitHub is already smart enough to deal with CRLF line endings.

The problem with eol=clrf is that the conversion to CRLF only occurs when someone clones the repo or downloads it as a .zip file. GitHub won't make the line ending conversion when someone downloads a single file using the "Download raw file" option in the GitHub interface.

Then, people that don't know about this problem will inevitably try to down a single file from the project and get an error when trying to import it in the VBE. For example: https://github.com/VBA-tools/VBA-Dictionary/issues/38

For that reason and because there is no known advantages to convert to LF, I'd suggest to change the .gitattributes file to avoid applying line conversion.

Potential approaches

1. Mark the vba files with -text to avoid line endings conversion.

This is the simplest way to avoid most problems. The only downside of this approach is that it doesn't stop anyone from uploading a file with LF.

2. Approach 1 + Use a filter to force the conversion to CRLF.

This approach is particularily useful if you make edits via VScode and don't what to introduce LF by mistake. However, it requires contributors to run a command to inlcude the .gitconfig to their local config.

For example:

.gitattributes:

# By default, auto detect text files and perform LF normalization
* text=auto eol=lf

# Important: To make sure the crlf filter is active, run the following command at the root of the git repo: git config include.path ../.gitconfig
# (The reason why we need the ".." is to move one folder up because the config file is located in the .git subfolder.)

# VBA extensions - Enforce CRLF using a filter
*.[bB][aA][sS]      filter=crlf -text working-tree-encoding=CP1252 
*.[cC][lL][sS]      filter=crlf -text working-tree-encoding=CP1252 
*.[fF][rR][mM]      filter=crlf -text working-tree-encoding=CP1252
*.[vV][bB][aA]      filter=crlf -text working-tree-encoding=CP1252

# VBA extensions - Mark as binary
*.[fF][rR][xX]      binary

.gitconfig:

[filter "crlf"]
        clean = unix2dos

3. Use a GitHub Action to enforce CRLF

This would be the only full proof method to maintain consitent line endings.

I think that would be a good thing to add this option to https://github.com/Vba-actions/lint-vba. I might actually have some python code I could contribute if you are interested to add this feature.