I'm seriously about to stop coding and become a carpenter. This problem has had me stressed out for quite some time now and there doesn't seem to be any clear solution, other than forcing non-windows machines to use the file permissions windows seems to inflict.

Let's begin with the scenario. I have 2 development machines, one running Windows7, the other Mac OSX. They both are using Eclipse and EGit, and both have cloned the same project from a remote repo. That's where the similarities end, because my windows machine has a nasty habit of retaining a file mode of **644** (r-xr--r--) on its local repo, while the mode on the Mac defaults to a cool **775** (rwxrwxr--x).

So the problem's obviously the file permissions - GIT reports there are files that have changed due to differences in file modes and not actual content. The solution seemed obvious, run the following commands:

```
 git config core.filemode false
 git config --global core.filemode false

```

...which worked like a charm, *except* when committing and merging resolved *conflicts*.

For example, say files A, B and C exist on both the Windows and Mac repos. Next, let's change the file mode for these 3 files on the Mac machine so that the developer can edit them. Now change some of the contents in file A. Because we're ignoring the file modes (thanks to the commands above) only file A will be committed and pushed, ready for the Windows machine to fetch, merge and enjoy...

Now, let's edit file A again on the Mac *and* on the Windows machines, effectively causing a potential conflict, and let the Windows machine commit and push file A first. Then, when the Mac user commits their changes to file A and fetches the latest changes from the remote repo, a conflict is obviously created.

After resolving the conflict on the Mac machine and adding file A back to their local repo, committing that merge includes the previously ignored files B and C, and thus highlighting my problem! Why are the previously ignored files being included in this merge commit? This doesn't seem to be a Mac / Windows problem exclusively, as this problem can be recreated both ways...

This probably wouldn't matter if there were only 3 files, but this project I'm referring to includes thousands, and all these up and down push and pulls are insane. Am I missing something really obvious? Any help will be greatly appreciated!