Re: git and mtime

From: Arafangion <thestar@fussycoder.id.au>
Date: Nov 19, 2008, 12:37 UTC
Message-ID: <1227098252.11370.8.camel@therock.nsw.bigpond.net.au>
In-Reply-To: <20081119113752.GA13611@ravenclaw.codelibre.net>

On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 11:37 +0000, Roger Leigh wrote: <snip>

> different systems).  However, the fact that git isn't storing the
> mtime of the files confuses make, so it then tries to regenerate these
> (already up-to-date) files, and fails in the process since the tools
> aren't available.

Unless I'm mistaken, I was under the impression that the reason why git doesn't, and shouldn't do this is _because_ it confuses make.

Suppose you've got two branches, and you check out the other branch, resulting in changes in 3 files. Should git go and modify the mtime for every single file, and remove any file that isn't part of the repo (Such as generated object files)?

If it modifies the dates on every file, but doesn't remove the generated object files, how does make handle that, as it'll likely generate some of the object files, but not all of them.

If it doesn't, but touches the files that changed, and the dates are now older than the corresponding object files, make would fail to recompile the project properly!

The only way this could work is if you never switch branches, which is quite limiting for git, and never check out an older revision, which is quite limiting for the RCS systems in general.

You should probably fix your build script, or add a hook script that sets the dates on the files in question manually, but the former solution would be much better.