How to make Git ignore file permission (chmod) changes

In Git, you can configure it to ignore file permission (chmod) changes by setting the core.fileMode option to false. This option controls whether Git tracks executable bit changes on files.

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Set core.fileMode for a single repository

To set this option for a single repository, navigate to the repository’s directory and run the following command:

git config core.fileMode false

This will update the .git/config file in the repository to include the setting, ensuring that Git will ignore permission changes for files in this repository.

2. Set core.fileMode globally

If you want to apply this setting to all of your repositories, you can set it globally by adding the --global flag:

git config --global core.fileMode false

This updates the global Git configuration file, which is typically located at ~/.gitconfig, and applies the setting to all repositories for your user.

Verification

To verify that the setting has been applied, you can check the configuration:

• For a single repository:

git config core.fileMode

• For the global configuration:

git config --global core.fileMode

Both commands should output false if the setting has been correctly applied.

By setting core.fileMode to false, Git will no longer track changes to the file mode, thus ignoring permission changes. This is particularly useful in environments where file permissions might change automatically, such as when using different operating systems or certain development tools.

When working with Git, you may encounter situations where file permission changes (chmod) are unintentionally tracked as changes in your repository. This can happen when Git detects file permission modifications and flags them as changes, even though you may not want these changes to be included in your version control history.

To make Git ignore file permission changes, you can utilize the git update-index command along with the –chmod option. This option instructs Git to ignore changes in file permissions when detecting modifications in your working directory.

Here’s a detailed guide on how to make Git ignore file permission changes: