I would git commit a .sh file, but would like it to be executable when I checkout that same file in another server.

Is there a way to do so without manually chmod u+x that file in the servers that checkout the file?

According to official documentation, you can set or remove the "executable" flag on any tracked file using update-index sub-command.

To set the flag, use following command:

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

To remove it, use:

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

Under the hood

While this looks like the regular unix files permission system, actually it is not. Git maintains a special "mode" for each file in its internal storage:

• 100644 for regular files
• 100755 for executable ones

You can visualize it using ls-file subcommand, with --stage option:

$ git ls-files --stage
100644 aee89ef43dc3b0ec6a7c6228f742377692b50484 0       .gitignore
100755 0ac339497485f7cc80d988561807906b2fd56172 0       my_executable_script.sh

By default, when you add a file to a repository, Git will try to honor its filesystem attributes and set the correct filemode accordingly. You can disable this by setting core.fileMode option to false:

git config core.fileMode false

Troubleshooting

If at some point the Git filemode is not set but the file has correct filesystem flag, try to remove mode and set it again:

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

Bonus

Starting with Git 2.9, you can stage a file AND set the flag in one command:

git add --chmod=+x path/to/file