How to restore the permissions of files and directories within git if they have been modified?

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Git keeps track of filepermission and exposes permission changes when creating patches using git diff -p. So all we need is:

  1. create a reverse patch
  2. include only the permission changes
  3. apply the patch to our working copy

As a one-liner:

git diff -p -R --no-ext-diff --no-color \
    | grep -E "^(diff|(old|new) mode)" --color=never  \
    | git apply

you can also add it as an alias to your git config…

git config --global --add alias.permission-reset '!git diff -p -R --no-ext-diff --no-color | grep -E "^(diff|(old|new) mode)" --color=never | git apply'

…and you can invoke it via:

git permission-reset

Note, if you shell is bash, make sure to use ' instead of " quotes around the !git, otherwise it gets substituted with the last git command you ran.

Thx to @Mixologic for pointing out that by simply using -R on git diff, the cumbersome sed command is no longer required.

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