Don't expect a .gitattributes in your root folder to have any effect. I had an entry to treat .sqlite files as binary:
*.sqlite binary
But what I got was:
$ git ls-files --eol docroot\sites\default\files\.ht.sqlite
i/-text w/-text attr/text eol=lf    docroot/sites/default/files/.ht.sqlite
File content identification used by #Git in index and working tree are binary/no normalization (i/-text w/-text). But when checking out or committing there is normalization (attr/text eol=lf). But therefore I have a .gitattributes, are you kidding me?

Took quite a long time to find out the problem. Further down in the tree was another .gitattributes. Actually no problem, as long as you don't use something like:
*    text=auto eol=lf