diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..6560e18664
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# pbtxt files should be treared as binary; see https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Attributes
+*.pbtxt binary
+
+# do not show up detailed difference on GitHub
+source/3rdparty/* linguist-generated=true