In case you are coming into this right now, I've just been through it today and can summarize where this stands. If you did not try this yet, some details here might help.
I think @Omid Ariyan's approach is the best way. Add the pre-commit and post-checkout scripts. DON'T forget to name them exactly the way Omid does and DON'T forget to make them executable. If you forget either of those, they have no effect and you run "git commit" over and over wondering why nothing happens :) Also, if you cut and paste out of the web browser, be careful that the quotation marks and ticks are not altered.
If you run the pre-commit script once (by running a git commit), then the file .permissions will be created. You can add it to the repository and I think it is unnecessary to add it over and over at the end of the pre-commit script. But it does not hurt, I think (hope).
There are a few little issues about the directory name and the existence of spaces in the file names in Omid's scripts. The spaces were a problem here and I had some trouble with the IFS fix. For the record, this pre-commit script did work correctly for me:
#!/bin/bash
SELF_DIR=`git rev-parse --show-toplevel`
DATABASE=$SELF_DIR/.permissions
# Clear the permissions database file
> $DATABASE
echo -n "Backing-up file permissions..."
IFSold=$IFS
IFS=$'\n'
for FILE in `git ls-files`
do
# Save the permissions of all the files in the index
echo $FILE";"`stat -c "%a;%U;%G" $FILE` >> $DATABASE
done
IFS=${IFSold}
# Add the permissions database file to the index
git add $DATABASE
echo "OK"
Now, what do we get out of this?
The .permissions file is in the top level of the git repo. It has one line per file, here is the top of my example:
$ cat .permissions
.gitignore;660;pauljohn;pauljohn
05.WhatToReport/05.WhatToReport.doc;664;pauljohn;pauljohn
05.WhatToReport/05.WhatToReport.pdf;664;pauljohn;pauljohn
As you can see, we have
filepath;perms;owner;group
In the comments about this approach, one of the posters complains that it only works with same username, and that is technically true, but it is very easy to fix it. Note the post-checkout script has 2 action pieces,
# Set the file permissions
chmod $PERMISSIONS $FILE
# Set the file owner and groups
chown $USER:$GROUP $FILE
So I am only keeping the first one, that's all I need. My user name on the Web server is indeed different, but more importantly you can't run chown unless you are root. Can run "chgrp", however. It is plain enough how to put that to use.
In the first answer in this post, the one that is most widely accepted, the suggestion is so use git-cache-meta, a script that is doing the same work that the pre/post hook scripts here are doing (parsing output from git ls-files). These scripts are easier for me to understand, the git-cache-meta code is rather more elaborate. It is possible to keep git-cache-meta in the path and write pre-commit and post-checkout scripts that would use it.
Spaces in file names are a problem with both of Omid's scripts. In the post-checkout script, you'll know you have the spaces in file names if you see errors like this
$ git checkout -- upload.sh
Restoring file permissions...chmod: cannot access '04.StartingValuesInLISREL/Open': No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access 'Notebook.onetoc2': No such file or directory
chown: cannot access '04.StartingValuesInLISREL/Open': No such file or directory
chown: cannot access 'Notebook.onetoc2': No such file or directory
I'm checking on solutions for that. Here's something that seems to work, but I've only tested in one case
#!/bin/bash
SELF_DIR=`git rev-parse --show-toplevel`
DATABASE=$SELF_DIR/.permissions
echo -n "Restoring file permissions..."
IFSold=${IFS}
IFS=$
while read -r LINE || [[ -n "$LINE" ]];
do
FILE=`echo $LINE | cut -d ";" -f 1`
PERMISSIONS=`echo $LINE | cut -d ";" -f 2`
USER=`echo $LINE | cut -d ";" -f 3`
GROUP=`echo $LINE | cut -d ";" -f 4`
# Set the file permissions
chmod $PERMISSIONS $FILE
# Set the file owner and groups
chown $USER:$GROUP $FILE
done < $DATABASE
IFS=${IFSold}
echo "OK"
exit 0
Since the permissions information is one line at a time, I set IFS to $, so only line breaks are seen as new things.
I read that it is VERY IMPORTANT to set the IFS environment variable back the way it was! You can see why a shell session might go badly if you leave $ as the only separator.
