core.whitespace
instructs git to flag certain whitespace problems:
trailing-space
warns about whitespace at the end of a line or at the end of a file
space-before-tab
warns when there is a space before a tab used for indentation
apply.whitespace
is used when applying a patch. It checks for whitespace errors (the ones listed above, in core.whitespace
) and applies the patch after attempting to fix them (i.e., remove them).
These options go in ~/.gitconfig
-- that is, a .gitconfig
file at the root of your user s home directory (typically /home/user/.gitconfig
on Linux, /Users/user/.gitconfig
on Mac OS X, and I don t know where on Windows but I suppose somewhere in C:Documents and Settingsuser
).