Subject: Re: [PATCH] init - Honour the global core.filemode setting

From: Torsten Bögershausen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 13:15:45 +0200

On 2014-10-01 19.10, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Hilco Wijbenga <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
>> Perhaps I completely misunderstand the meaning of core.filemode but I
>> thought it determined whether Git cared about changes in file
>> properties?
> 
> By setting it to "false", you tell Git that the filesystem you
> placed the repository does not correctly represent the filemode
> (especially the executable bit).
> 
> "core.fileMode" in "git config --help" reads:
> 
>        core.fileMode
>            If false, the executable bit differences between the
>            index and the working tree are ignored; useful on broken
>            filesystems like FAT. See git-update- index(1).

Out of my head: Could the following be a starting point:

        core.fileMode
            If false, the executable bit differences between the
            index and the working tree are ignored.
            This may be usefull when visiting a cygwin repo with a non-cygwin
            Git client. (should we mention msysgit ? should we mention JGit/EGit ?)
	    This may even be useful for a repo on a SAMBA network mount,
            which may show all file permissions as 0755.
            See git-update-index(1) for changing the executable bit in the index. 

            The default is true, except git-clone(1) or git-init(1)
            will probe and set core.fileMode false if appropriate
            when the repository is created.
> 
> Maybe our documentation is not clear enough.  A contribution from
> somebody new to Git we would appreciate would be to point out which
> part of these sentences are unclear; that way, people can work on
> improving its phrasing.
> 
> Thanks.