Git is changing my file's permissions when I push to server

Question

I am using git to manage a website on a server.

I have a local repository shown below

local@workstation:myapp$ ls -l | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'
total 16
755 drwxr-xr-x@ 18 thomas  staff   612 Jun 13 15:35 application
755 drwxr-xr-x@ 11 thomas  staff   374 Jun 12 16:25 assets
644 -rw-r--r--@  1 thomas  staff  6399 Jun 22 11:45 index.php
755 drwxr-xr-x@ 10 thomas  staff   340 May 14 15:22 system

I have a bare repository on the server that uses post-receive to point the repo in front of apache. Apache's public folders contents are below -not the bare repository.

root@server:/srv/public/myapp# ls -l | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'
total 20
700 drwx------ 15 root root 4096 Jun 27 11:31 application
700 drwx------ 10 root root 4096 Jun 27 11:31 assets
600 -rw-------  1 root root 6399 Jun 27 11:31 index.php
700 drwx------  8 root root 4096 Jun 27 11:31 system

This is causing mayhem to my code on the webserver.

How can I fix this? I'm using gitolite if that makes any difference.

git server config file

[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = true
        bare = true

Answer 1

This thread post offers a very good explanation:

This is by design. While the git data structure can technically store unix mode bits in its trees, it was found early on in git's history that respecting anything beyond a simple executable bit ended up being more cumbersome for git's normal use cases (i.e., people storing code or other shared files in a repository).

We could add in a config option to respect file modes, but it has generally been seen as not worthwhile. It solves only a part of the general metadata problem, as it omits owner and group names or ids, as well as extended metadata like ACLs.

If modes are important to you, the suggested fixes are one of:

1. Use a tool like "metastore" that can be called from git hooks, and will save and restore file permissions in a file that is tracked in the repository. Do note that when using such a tool there is a race condition in protecting files (i.e., git will create your file as 644, and then metastore will correct it to 600; in the meantime, somebody could read your file).

2. Depending on exactly what you're storing, it may make sense to keep your repository in another directory, protected by permissions, and then use a separate tool to deploy your files from the repository to their ultimate location (e.g., a Makefile or other install tool).