2514
votes

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?

11
This is helpful when working with git on Windows + Bash on Ubuntu on WindowsElazar
For anyone who just wants to ignore permission changes for a specific invocation of git diff, and who therefore does not want to alter their Git configuration files: you can use git diff -G. per Zed's answer here.user82216

11 Answers

4189
votes

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

And the --global flag will make it be the default behavior for the logged in user.

git config --global core.fileMode false

Changes of the global setting won't be applied to existing repositories. 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.

294
votes

undo mode change in working tree:

git diff --summary | grep --color 'mode change 100755 => 100644' | cut -d' ' -f7- | xargs -d'\n' chmod +x
git diff --summary | grep --color 'mode change 100644 => 100755' | cut -d' ' -f7- | xargs -d'\n' chmod -x

Or in mingw-git

git diff --summary | grep  'mode change 100755 => 100644' | cut -d' ' -f7- | xargs -e'\n' chmod +x
git diff --summary | grep  'mode change 100644 => 100755' | cut -d' ' -f7- | xargs -e'\n' chmod -x
145
votes

If you want to set this option for all of your repos, use the --global option.

git config --global core.filemode false

If this does not work you are probably using a newer version of git so try the --add option.

git config --add --global core.filemode false

If you run it without the --global option and your working directory is not a repo, you'll get

error: could not lock config file .git/config: No such file or directory
101
votes

If

git config --global core.filemode false

does not work for you, do it manually:

cd into yourLovelyProject folder

cd into .git folder:

cd .git

edit the config file:

nano config

change true to false

[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = true

->

[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = false

save, exit, go to upper folder:

cd ..

reinit the git

git init

you are done!

56
votes

Adding to Greg Hewgill answer (of using core.fileMode config variable):

You can use --chmod=(-|+)x option of git update-index (low-level version of "git add") to change execute permissions in the index, from where it would be picked up if you use "git commit" (and not "git commit -a").

42
votes

You can configure it globally:

git config --global core.filemode false

If the above doesn't work for you, the reason might be your local configuration overrides the global configuration.

Remove your local configuration to make the global configuration take effect:

git config --unset core.filemode

Alternatively, you could change your local configuration to the right value:

git config core.filemode false

25
votes

If you have used chmod command already then check the difference of file, It shows previous file mode and current file mode such as:

new mode : 755

old mode : 644

set old mode of all files using below command

sudo chmod 644 .

now set core.fileMode to false in config file either using command or manually.

git config core.fileMode false

then apply chmod command to change the permissions of all files such as

sudo chmod 755 .

and again set core.fileMode to true.

git config core.fileMode true

For best practises don't Keep core.fileMode false always.

21
votes

By definining the following alias (in ~/.gitconfig) you can easily temporarily disable the fileMode per git command:

[alias]
nfm = "!f(){ git -c core.fileMode=false $@; };f"

When this alias is prefixed to the git command, the file mode changes won't show up with commands that would otherwise show them. For example:

git nfm status
14
votes

If you want to set filemode to false in config files recursively (including submodules) : find -name config | xargs sed -i -e 's/filemode = true/filemode = false/'

5
votes

Simple solution:

Hit this Simple command in project Folder(it won't remove your original changes) ...it will only remove changes that had been done while you changed project folder permission

command is below:

git config core.fileMode false

Why this all unnecessary file get modified: because you have changed the project folder permissions with commend sudo chmod -R 777 ./yourProjectFolder

when will you check changes what not you did? you found like below while using git diff filename

old mode 100644
new mode 100755
3
votes

This works for me:

find . -type f -exec chmod a-x {} \;

or reverse, depending on your operating system

find . -type f -exec chmod a+x {} \;