chmod-scripts.md

This document is created as guidelines about how to fix executable issues with shell scripts for non-UNIX users.

Error: File:[FILE_PATH] is not executable

The error indicates that listed bash (shell) scripts are not marked as executable. On UNIX-like system this is not a problem, not only because systematically files must have the execute permission set to run them as scripts, but because OS supports such configurations natively.

Windows, on other hand, does not "support" this natively or in other way, Git on Windows systems does not support such work tree by default.

How to fix this issue

Git tracks file permissions using the core.fileMode configuration. In a Windows environment, this setting is often disabled. Run the following command to confirm:

git config --get core.fileMode

• If it outputs false, Git is not tracking file permission changes.

• To enable it temporarily for this repository:

  git config core.fileMode true

If chmod +x (or other ways) doesn’t show changes in Git status, you can force Git to reapply the executable bit:

git update-index --chmod=+x path/to/file

This explicitly tells Git to update its metadata for the files, after this, you can commit and push the changes.

How to cross-verify

If you're using Git Bash or WSL, verify that the +x bit is applied. Run:

ls -l path/to/file

You should see something like:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 user group 1234 Nov 22 12:34 deinstall.sh

If the x is missing and the above steps didn’t work, proceed with the guidelines.

Connecting with hooks

PATTERNU projects tries to fix this issue as future-proof (consistency of x bit) by implementing JavaScript hook, which tries to define executable bit in the shell files:

# .husky/pre-commit
node chmod-scripts.mjs
npx lint-staged

And the script with usage of file system library, looks like this:

import { chmodSync, readdirSync, statSync } from 'fs'
import { join } from 'path'

function setExecutable (filePath) {
  try {
    chmodSync(filePath, '755')
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(`Failed to set executable: ${filePath} - ${error.message}`)
  }
}

function processDirectory (dirPath) {
  readdirSync(dirPath).forEach((file) => {
    const fullPath = join(dirPath, file)
    if (statSync(fullPath).isDirectory()) {
      processDirectory(fullPath)
    } else if (fullPath.endsWith('.sh')) {
      setExecutable(fullPath)
    }
  })
}

processDirectory(process.cwd())

Using only Node.js native libraries, this script tries to assign executable permission always upon committing.