document about .gitattributes

.gitattributes is used by many projects in their development workflows. THis can, many a times, interfere with the Apertis package development workflow. Thus document the fix for such cases.

Signed-off-by: Ritesh Raj Sarraf ritesh.sarraf@collabora.com

content/guides/apertis_packaging_guide.md

@@ -445,3 +445,21 @@ Branches:
 Tags:
 * `debian/*`: tags for Debian releases in the `debian/*` branches
 * `apertis/*`:  tags for the Apertis releases in the `apertis/*` branches
+
+Git:
+
+Gitattributes is a feature that enables modificaitons to be automatically made by git when certain
+operations are done (such as `checkout`, `check-in` and `clone`) to enforce certain project standards.
+but this has the potential effect of modifying files and that's not what we want when packaging. More
+details about [gitattributes](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitattributes).
+
+* Many upstream projects ship a `.gitattributes` file in their source repositories, which are
+  tightly tied to their development workflows. At times, certain settings in `.gitattributes`
+  can lead to problems in our packaging workflow, as summarized above. Thus, it is advised to execute
+  the following command, which will override any such inherited settings from the
+  `.gitattributes` file:
+
+  ```
+  echo "* -text -eol -crlf -ident -filter -working-tree-encoding -export-subst" > .git/info/attributes
+  ```
+  * This will override the settings in the `.gitattributes` file from the repository, for all files and for the mentioned features