Is there a "git reset --keep <sha1> || git reset --hard <sha1>" alternative?

If you check out a git repository and chmod a checked-in file there there away from git defaults then "git reset --hard" will re-chmod it.

The use-case for not having this happen is if you e.g. have some inotify thing or a stat() loop monitoring changes to the files, and you'd like them to fire on "real" updates, not just updates that were introduced because something re-chmoded a file.

E.g. on current git.git master:

    $ ls -l INSTALL ; chmod 600 INSTALL ; git reset --hard @{u} ; ls -l INSTALL
    -rw-r--r-- 1 avar avar 9147 Apr 20 17:11 INSTALL
    HEAD is now at e6ac6e1 Fifth batch for post 2.8 cycle
    -rw-r--r-- 1 avar avar 9147 Apr 20 17:12 INSTALL

What I'd like is for the permissions not to be altered:

    $ ls -l INSTALL ; chmod 600 INSTALL ; git reset --keep @{u} ; ls -l INSTALL
    -rw-r--r-- 1 avar avar 9147 Apr 20 17:12 INSTALL
    -rw------- 1 avar avar 9147 Apr 20 17:12 INSTALL

But I don't want this to happen:

    $ echo "Blah" > INSTALL && git add INSTALL && git commit -m"blah"
    [master d29463e] blah
     1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 223 deletions(-)
     rewrite INSTALL (100%)
    $ ls -l INSTALL ; chmod 600 INSTALL ; git reset --keep @{u} ; ls -l INSTALL
    -rw------- 1 avar avar 5 Apr 20 17:14 INSTALL
    error: Entry 'INSTALL' not uptodate. Cannot merge.
    fatal: Could not reset index file to revision '@{u}'.
    -rw------- 1 avar avar 5 Apr 20 17:14 INSTALL

Instead I want:

    $ ls -l INSTALL ; chmod 600 INSTALL ; git reset --keep @{u} || git
reset --hard @{u}  ; ls -l INSTALL
    -rw------- 1 avar avar 5 Apr 20 17:14 INSTALL
    error: Entry 'INSTALL' not uptodate. Cannot merge.
    fatal: Could not reset index file to revision '@{u}'.
    HEAD is now at e6ac6e1 Fifth batch for post 2.8 cycle
    -rw-r--r-- 1 avar avar 9147 Apr 20 17:15 INSTALL

And the expectation here is that I'll have something that does a chmod after the reset happens, which is fine because we had a "real" change, I just don't want the repo to keep having flip-flopping permissions because I'd both like:

 * Local chmod to be respected
 * Actual file content changes to be wiped away by reset --hard

Is there another way to do this, or dare I say alternatively maybe we could use another option to reset making it even more confusing :)

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

A quick question.  What happens when you did this instead?

	chmod 600 INSTALL
        git update-index --refresh
        git reset --hard

Does it match what you want to see?

The reason I ask is because I recall making a deliberate design decision around this area.

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 9:03 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

The --hard doesn't wipe away the chmod, makes sense:

    $ ls -l INSTALL ; chmod 600 INSTALL ; git update-index --refresh;
git reset --hard @{u} ; ls -l INSTALL
    -rw-r--r-- 1 avar avar 9147 Apr 20 22:27 INSTALL
    HEAD is now at 05045e0 tracing
    -rw------- 1 avar avar 9147 Apr 20 22:27 INSTALL