Using GIT to store /etc (Or: How to make GIT store all file permission bits)

[Kyle Moffett <mrmacman_g4@mac.com>]

I've recently become somewhat interested in the idea of using GIT to  
store the contents of various folders in /etc.  However after a bit  
of playing with this, I discovered that GIT doesn't actually preserve  
all permission bits since that would cause problems with the more  
traditional software development model.  I'm curious if anyone has  
done this before; and if so, how they went about handling the  
permissions and ownership issues.

I spent a little time looking over how GIT stores and compares  
permission bits; trying to figure out if it's possible to patch in a  
new configuration variable or two; say "preserve_all_perms" and  
"preserve_owner", or maybe even "save_acls".  It looks like standard  
permission preservation is fairly basic; you would just need to patch  
a few routines which alter the permissions read in from disk or  
compare them with ones from the database.  On the other hand, it  
would appear that preserving ownership or full POSIX ACLs might be a  
bit of a challenge.

Thanks for your insight and advice!

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett