Re: Git checkout preserve timestamp?

From: Bill Lear <rael@zopyra.com>
Date: Mar 5, 2007, 23:27 UTC
Message-ID: <17900.42839.514960.613003@lisa.zopyra.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0703052339050.22628@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>

On Monday, March 5, 2007 at 23:56:02 (+0100) Johannes Schindelin writes:

>...
>It may not be infeasible.
>
>But it is wrong. It "fixes" a totallc clear idiom, ...

A very valid point.  I dislike breaking clear idioms also.

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>> the timestamp for that file on that branch would be invalidated, and the 
>> file would get whatever timestamp it got when it was written to disk.
>
>This approach is so fragile! It is invasive, easy to get wrong (count the 
>ways how to invalidate the timestamp), and serves only an obscure use 
>case, which is better solved otherwise to begin with.

More very valid points.

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>> >So stop even asking for this. We'd have to be totally and utterly 
>> >incompetent to do what you ask for. We're simply not that stupid. 
>
>FWIW I have to agree here. I saw quite a few projects go wrong, because 
>management insisted on abolishing a perfectly good design, just because 
>they had this pet idea.

This is not my "pet idea". I could care less about it: I have other alternatives. I was just engaging in what I hoped would be a friendly exchange about this, but it seems to have touched a nerve, and then invective with unsubtle charges of STUPID was loaded into the catapult and flung across the sea ...

I loathe politics getting in the way of something clean, robust, and useful. I would be the last to advocate it: besides were I really convinced that git MUST have this or die, I would try to write it myself --- I was just hoping for an argument showing why it was such a lame-brained idea from a logical, not implementation, standpoint.

Thanks again for your time.

Bill