title: Why does git phantom modification disappear after I edit .gitattributes
body: <p>This is really weird. I have a project, lets call it project X. </p>
  
  <p>I push project X to github. 
  I then check it out on a different machine. I type <code>git status</code> and I see this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>modified:   test/bower_components/mocha/media/logo.svg
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What?</p>
  
  <p>I diff it, and it looks <em>exactly</em> the same. One possibility is that this is a line-feed normalization issue. I know you can specify repo specific line-feed options in <code>.gitattributes</code>. So I open <code>.gitattributes</code> and see this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>* text=auto
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>According to <a href="https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitattributes.html" rel="nofollow">Git Doc</a>:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>This ensures that all files that git considers to be text will have
    normalized (LF) line endings in the repository. The core.eol
    configuration variable controls which line endings git will use for
    normalized files in your working directory; the default is to use the
    native line ending for your platform, or CRLF if core.autocrlf is set.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Okay, so maybe the normalization is causing git to think I changed the file or something. This is still unlikely, since both machines are running Ubuntu. </p>
  
  <p>Whatever. I'll just delete it and see what happens. So I delete it, type <code>git status</code>, and see this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>modified:   .gitattributes
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The <code>.svg</code> modification isn't considered to be modified anymore!</p>
  
  <p>I go back and undo my change to <code>.gitattributes</code>. I then type <code>git status</code></p>
  
  <pre><code>nothing to commit, working directory clean
  </code></pre>