Date and time stamps of files

[Matt Mackall]

On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 11:51:30AM -0700, Eric Hopper wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 11:34:38AM -0700, Matt Mackall wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 08:15:36PM +0200, Manfred Lotz wrote:
> > > I observed when I check out older revisions the file date and time
> > > stamps do not reflect the original date and time stamps when they were
> > > committed.
> > > 
> > > Is it a feature?! I would prefer to have ther original dates and times
> > > of files. 
> > 
> > You're the first person to ask for such a feature. What do other
> > systems do?
> 
> I don't know if svn makes for a good standard to test against, but it
> doesn't do this.

Well the question is which timestamp?

> Perforce records the file timestamp as in the version when you do a
> commit and sets the timestamp of the checked out file.

This is ctime, presumably. With mtime set to present, so as not to
upset make.

> cvs does as Perforce does.

More likely, Perforce is copying CVS. But why?
 
> Storing the timestamp of the checked in file would require some deeper
> changes to Mercurial to store that metadata in the manifest.  So, even
> if that behavior is desired, I assume it would be awhile in coming.
> Setting the timestamp to the commit time for the change would be
> possible.

We could set ctime to commit time, but it doesn't seem worth the
trouble. And wouldn't be very useful. Per-file dates won't happen.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.