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

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/writefind . -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.

undo mode change in working tree:

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

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