Re: [PATCH] add: add --chmod=+x / --chmod=-x options

[Edward Thomson <ethomson@edwardthomson.com>]

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 12:36:55AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> At the design level, I have a few comments.

Thanks, I will submit a new patch that incorporates your (and dscho's)
comments.

>  * This is about a repository with core.filemode=0; I wonder if
>    something for a repository with core.symlinks=0 would also help?
>    That is, would it be a big help to users if they can prepare a
>    text file that holds symbolic link contents and add it as if it
>    were a symlink with "git add", instead of having to run two
>    commands, "hash-objects && update-index --cacheinfo"?

I think that this is much less common and - speaking only from personal
experience - nobody has ever asked me how to stage a symlink on a
Windows machine.  I think that this is due to the fact that symlinks on
Windows are basically impossible to use, so people doing cross-platform
development wouldn't even try.

On the other hand, it's quite common for cross-platform teams to use
some scripting language since those do work across platforms, and
Windows users would want to add new scripts as executable for the
benefit of their brethren on platforms with an executable bit.

>  * I am not familiar with life on filesystems with core.filemode=0;
>    do files people would want to be able to "add --chmod=+x" share
>    common trait that can be expressed with .gitattributes mechanism?

Perhaps...  It would not be things like `*.bat` or `*.exe` - Windows
gets those as executable "for free" and would not care about adding the
execute bit on those files (since they're not executable anywhere else).
It would be items like `*.sh` or `*.rb` that should be executable on
POSIX platforms.

However I do not think that this is a common enough action that it needs
to be made automatic such that when I `git add foo.rb` it is
automatically made executable.  I think that the reduced complexity of
having a single mechanism to control executability (that being the
execute mode in the index or a tree) is preferable to a gitattributes
based mechanism, at least until somebody else makes a cogent argument
that the gitattributes approach would be helpful for them.  :)

Thanks again for the comments, an updated patch is forthcoming.

-ed