What does the green chart/pencil icon mean on .gitattributes file in a git repo?

Question

.gitattributes file icon with green chart and pencil I am fairly new to git. I have both a laptop and desktop that I have been using to practice git locally using the command line. On my laptop I have installed git and tortoise git and have only changed git settings to utilize notepad++ as the default editor and set core.autocrlf=true. Everything is working fine on the laptop and am able to run the application which is tecnomatix plant simulation. Whereas on the desktop, I have only installed git and not tortoise git, made the same setting changes as was done on the laptop but also I messed with the.gitattributes file and ran these methods in the cmd line:

git rm --cached -r

git reset --hard

I read somewhere else that the first line above will delete the file. Not sure if this is true since the.gitattributes file is still listed in the repository, however the icon of the.gitattributes file has changed from standard.txt file icon to.txt file icon with a green chart and a pencil. Anyways I am unable to run the application on my desktop and believe the reason is due to changes I made with the.gitattributes files. Appreciate any clarification anyone may have on this.

Answer 1

This icon seems to indicate that the file (extension) is associated with Notepad+.

This icon is not related to TortoiseGit. TortoiseGit uses overlays: https://tortoisegit.org/docs/tortoisegit/tgit-dug.html#tgit-dug-general-icons