Solved: How do I make Git ignore file mode (chmod) changes?

Question:

I have a project in which I have to change the mode of files with chmod to 777 while developing, but which should not change in the main repo.
Git picks up on chmod -R 777 . and marks all files as changed. Is there a way to make Git ignore mode changes that have been made to files?

Best Answer:

Try:

git config core.fileMode false

From git-config(1):

core.fileMode Tells Git if the executable bit of files in the working tree is to be honored. Some filesystems lose the executable bit when a file that is marked as executable is checked out, or checks out a non-executable file with executable bit on. git-clone(1) or git-init(1) probe the filesystem to see if it handles the executable bit correctly and this variable is automatically set as necessary. A repository, however, may be on a filesystem that handles the filemode correctly, and this variable is set to true when created, but later may be made accessible from another environment that loses the filemode (e.g. exporting ext4 via CIFS mount, visiting a Cygwin created repository with Git for Windows or Eclipse). In such a case it may be necessary to set this variable to false. See git-update-index(1). The default is true (when core.filemode is not specified in the config file).

The -c flag can be used to set this option for one-off commands:

git -c core.fileMode=false diff

Typing the -c core.fileMode=false can be bothersome and so you can set this flag for all git repos or just for one git repo:

# this will set your the flag for your user for all git repos (modifies `$HOME/.gitconfig`)
# WARNING: this will be override by local config, fileMode value is automatically selected with latest version of git.
# This mean that if git detect your current filesystem is compatible it will set local core.fileMode to true when you clone or init a repository.
# Tool like cygwin emulation will be detected as compatible and so your local setting WILL BE SET to true no matter what you set in global setting.
git config --global core.fileMode false

# this will set the flag for one git repo (modifies `$current_git_repo/.git/config`)
git config core.fileMode false

Additionally, git clone and git init explicitly set core.fileMode to true in the repo config as discussed in Git global core.fileMode false overridden locally on clone

Warning

core.fileMode is not the best practice and should be used carefully. This setting only covers the executable bit of mode and never the read/write bits. In many cases you think you need this setting because you did something like chmod -R 777, making all your files executable. But in most projects most files don’t need and should not be executable for security reasons.
The proper way to solve this kind of situation is to handle folder and file permission separately, with something like:

find . -type d -exec chmod a+rwx {} \; # Make folders traversable and read/write
find . -type f -exec chmod a+rw {} \;  # Make files read/write

If you do that, you’ll never need to use core.fileMode, except in very rare environment.

If you have better answer, please add a comment about this, thank you!

Source: Stackoverflow.com

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