Let me repeat myself:

> But in my case I was converting an entire repo into one using LFS.

then check out the section in the manual "INCLUDE AND EXCLUDE REFERENCES"

OK, and your main complaint was that it added .gitattributes to all previous commits? What if someone were to go back and add a .bin to the earlier commits, you would still want it in LFS, right? I'm not sure what "cross referencing to the current commit" would mean in that case. I don't see why you would want to use the .gitattributes from a different branch, like main or something. It seems very un-git-like for an operation to reference another branch without being explicitly told to do so.

But anyway, yes, LFS rewrites history if you want to apply it to history. I agree it's sub-par; it's disruptive and risks breaking links to specific githashes.