Torsten Bögershausen [off-list ref] writes:
That's better ... here is my attempt to improve
That reads well. Thanks.
doc: do not use `rm .git/index` when normalizing line endings
When illustrating how to normalize the line endings, the
documentation in gitattributes tells the user to `rm .git/index`.
This is incorrect for two reasons. Users shouldn't be instructed
to futz with the internal implementation of Git using raw
file system tools like "rm".
Second, when submodules or second working trees are used, ".git"
is a not a directory but a "gitfile" pointing at the location of the
real ".git" directory, `rm .git/index` does not work.
The point of the step in the illustration is to remove all
entries from the index without touching the working tree, and
the way to do it with Git is to use `read-tree --empty`.