Apple's .plist files have two equivalent on-disk representations, binary and xml. These snippets help keep binary crap out of your repository.

.gitattributes

*.plist filter=xmlplist

# surprise! Quartz patches are plists, too!
*.qtz   filter=xmlplist

.gitconfig

[filter "xmlplist"]
    clean = "git-plutil-filter.sh"
    smudge = "git-plutil-filter.sh"

git-plutil-filter.sh

#!/bin/sh
# had to do this because git doesn't like attaching stdin and out to plutil (waitpid error)

#TMPDIR isn't set for ssh logins!
TMPDIR=`getconf DARWIN_USER_TEMP_DIR`

tempfoo=`basename $0`
TMPFILE=`mktemp ${TMPDIR}/${tempfoo}.XXXXXX` || exit 1

cat > $TMPFILE
plutil -convert xml1 $TMPFILE
cat $TMPFILE
rm $TMPFILE