Ability to ignore EOL changes for certain projects

[Scott Richmond <scott@brightrockgames.com>]

The Problem Domain
In certain dev environments (Unity3D projects) there is (AFAIK) an
unsolvable problem where some files are often modified with line
endings that aren't the native system or not the committed line
endings for that file. Secondarily, in this case line endings don't
matter - Nothing in the dev environment "cares" which kind of line
ending is used.

The Problem
Git always cares about EOL. Git has options to transparently modify
EOLs when files are checked in or out. However it is not possible to
tell Git to ignore EOLs in other commands:
Git status shows the file modified.
Merging/Pulling has to care because it can't merge with a modified
working tree. Which means the user has to care - They have to either
stash the EOL changes or wipe them out. Sometimes, if the user has a
particular app running, it may automatically reload that file and
recreate the modified EOL changes, causing an endless loop. This
problem is often made unclear to the user how to solve, especially if
they aren't domain experts.

To be clear, in this particular dev environment, I can say with
confidence that this particular issue is a major and common pain point
for users. It is made worse as many users in this environment aren't
programmers by trade and aren't domain experts in version control. I
also believe this environment is becoming a non-trivial portion of the
Git userbase and it would be worthwhile looking into resolving.

Solution Request
It would be fantastic if we could tell Git to stop caring about EOL
changes on a per-repo basis, with the effective output being that git
status shouldn't show changes for files with differing EOLs.

I'm experienced with Git, though I am not expert enough to consider
creating such a change myself - It is unclear to me just how
complicated a change may be. However maybe I could look into it if it
was made clear that this improvement is possible and has no serious
side effects.

Regards,

Scott Richmond.
  Director, Producer, Programmer
  Brightrock Games
  T: 07480795661