When interacting between Windows and Unix filesystems using Git, setting a file to be executable takes a particular Git command from the Windows computer. With standalone Unix systems, just chmod +x myfile.sh is tracked by Git. However, with Windows Subsystem for Linux or Cygwin, this chmod +x change is not tracked if the file resides on a Windows filesystem and not within the WSL internal filesystem.

Windows file mode permission for executable aren’t as trivial as Unix-like chmod. Unix-like file systems such as Linux and MacOS need the executable bit set correctly to execute shell scripts and binary executables as expected. On Unix-like file systems, Git propagates the executable permission of files.

To add executable permission on Windows and for all other systems, use Git command:

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

To remove executable permission on Windows and for all other systems, use Git command:

git update-index --chmod=-x /path/to/exe

Verify the change to executable permission by:

git status --porcelain=2

which will have output including:

1 M. N… 100644 100755 100755 … /path/to/exe