Configuring git and your editor to avoid trailing whitespace

Here’s some tips for avoiding extraneous trailing whitespace in your git commits:

RubyMine Setting

Useful link:

How to not leave trailing whitespace (using your editor or Git)

Having Git check for you

  1. First, set up a global template git hook.
  2. I’m looking for the right pre-commit hook

Ideas I did not test:

Might update only changed lines

git diff --cached --no-color > stage.diff && git apply --index -R stage.diff && git apply --index --whitespace=fix stage.diff && rm -f stage.diff

Might update all lines:

Similar Script from makandra

# A git hook script to find and fix trailing whitespace in your commits. Bypass
# it with the --no-verify option to git-commit.

# detect platform
platform="win"
uname_result=`uname`
if [[ "$uname_result" == "Linux" ]]; then
  platform="linux"
elif [[ "$uname_result" == "Darwin" ]]; then
  platform="mac"
fi

# change IFS to ignore filename's space in |for|
IFS="
"

# remove trailing whitespace in modified lines
for line in `git diff --check --cached | sed '/^[+-]/d'` ; do
  # get file name
  if [[ "$platform" == "mac" ]]; then
    file="`echo $line | sed -E 's/:[0-9]+: .*//'`"
    line_number="`echo $line | sed -E 's/.*:([0-9]+).*/\1/'`"
  else
    file="`echo $line | sed -r 's/:[0-9]+: .*//'`"
    line_number="`echo $line | sed -r 's/.*:([0-9]+).*/\1/'`"
  fi

  # since $file in working directory isn't always equal to $file in index,
  # we backup it; thereby we can add our whitespace fixes without accidently
  # adding unstaged changes
  backup_file="${file}.working_directory_backup"
  cat "$file" > "$backup_file"
  git checkout -- "$file" # discard unstaged changes in working directory

  # remove trailing whitespace in $file (modified lines only)
  if [[ "$platform" == "win" ]]; then
    # in windows, `sed -i` adds ready-only attribute to $file (I don't kown why), so we use temp file instead
    sed "${line_number}s/[[:space:]]*$//" "$file" > "${file}.bak"
    mv -f "${file}.bak" "$file"
  elif [[ "$platform" == "mac" ]]; then
    sed -i "" "${line_number}s/[[:space:]]*$//" "$file"
  else
    sed -i "${line_number}s/[[:space:]]*$//" "$file"
  fi
  git add "$file" # to index, so our whitespace changes will be committed

  # restore unstaged changes in $file from its working directory backup, fixing
  # whitespace that we fixed above
  sed "${line_number}s/[[:space:]]*$//" "$backup_file" > "$file"
  rm "$backup_file"
  
  [[ "$platform" == "mac" ]] || e_option="-e" # mac does not understand -e
  echo $e_option "Removed trailing whitespace in \033[31m$file\033[0m:$line_number"
done

echo

# credits:
# https://github.com/philz/snippets/blob/master/pre-commit-remove-trailing-whitespace.sh
# https://github.com/imoldman/config/blob/master/pre-commit.git.sh

# If there still are whitespace errors, print the offending file names and fail.
exec git diff-index --check --cached $against --

# Now we can commit
exit

Script to update all files in git repo to remove trailing whitespace

I’m looking for a script to do this.

Possibly something like this:

egrep -rl ' $' --include *.java *  | xargs sed -i 's/\s\+$//g'