Automatically apply "git update-index --chmod=+x" to executable files

Here is a script to automatically apply git update-index --chmod+x to executable files:

for f in `find . -name '*.sh' -o -regex './s?bin/[^/]+' -o -regex './usr/sbin/[^/]+' -o -regex './usr/lib/[^/]+' `;do
 ( cd `dirname $f` && git update-index --chmod=+x  `basename $f` )
done 

There are several ways to do that.

  1. Git aliases
  2. Bash aliases
  3. Or even combine bash and git aliases
  1. Git aliases

    You can always use bash within your git alias.

    • Open your git config:

      vim ~/.gitconfig

    • Add an aliases section to it (if one does not exist):

      [alias]
          addscr = !sh -c 'if [[ ${0: -3} == ".sh" ]]; then git update-index --chmod=+x $0; git add $0'
      
  2. Bash aliases

    • Edit your bash profile file:

      vim ~/.bashrc

    • Add this at the end of the file:

      function gitadd(){
          if [[ ${1: -3} == ".sh" ]]
              then git update-index --chmod=+x $1
          fi
          git add $1
       }
       alias gitadd='gitadd'
      
  3. Combine git and bash aliases

    • Edit your bash profile file:

      vim ~/.bashrc

    • Add this to the end of the file:

      function checkShellFile(){
          return ${1: -3} == ".sh"
      }
      alias gitadd='checkShellFile ? git addsrcipt "$1" : && git add "$1"'
      
    • Edit your git config file:

      vim ~/.gitconfig

    • Add an aliases section to it (if one does not exist):

      [alias]
          addscript = !sh -c 'git update-index --chmod=+x $0 && git add $0'
      

None of the above has been tested


A solution without fancy bash scripting:

  1. Set fileMode = true in your .git/config file (or by running git config core.filemode true as others have pointed out)
  2. Change the executable bit on the file's permissions and commit this change. ( chmod u+x $script as you pointed out). You only have to do this once.
  3. Push to the remote

The next time you pull from there, git will set the committed executable bit on the file. I also had similar problems, this solved them.

fileMode = true tells git to track the only thing about permissions it can: the executable bit. This means that changes to the executable bit will be recognized by git as changes in the working tree and those changes will be stored in the repo with your next commit.

Once you committed the desired executable bit you can also reset your fileMode to false so next time git won't bother you with such changes when you don't want to commit them.


git 2.9.X/2.10 (Q3 2016) brings chmod to git add itself!

See commit 4e55ed3 (31 May 2016) by Edward Thomson (ethomson).
Helped-by: Johannes Schindelin (dscho).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit c8b080a, 06 Jul 2016)

add: add --chmod=+x / --chmod=-x options

The executable bit will not be detected (and therefore will not be set) for paths in a repository with core.filemode set to false, though the users may still wish to add files as executable for compatibility with other users who do have core.filemode functionality.
For example, Windows users adding shell scripts may wish to add them as executable for compatibility with users on non-Windows.

Although this can be done with a plumbing command (git update-index --add --chmod=+x foo), teaching the git-add command allows users to set a file executable with a command that they're already familiar with.

You can see the origin of this new feature in "How to create file execute mode permissions in Git on Windows?" (Feb. 2011)