Re: Keeping the file modification date with git

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 28, 2011, 22:25 UTC
Message-ID: <20110128222552.GA10372@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <87bp30vmek.fsf@an-dro.info.enstb.org>

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 08:49:39PM +0100, Ronan Keryell wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> After heavily using git for code development, we plan to use it for
> administrative storage and I need to keep the modification date
> of the files.
> [...]
> So I'm envisioning different solutions:
> 
> - it is already done. I have missed this. :-) But would be great. :-)

Nope. The tree format does not have a date field.

> - giving up. Not an option :-)

Right. :)

> - it is added to git core functions because it is quite useful for some
>   people. Too time-consuming for me since I'm not a git developer... But
>   someone else could do this...

Nope. That would require changing one of the fundamental data structures of git (the tree object) and is not likely to happen for a variety of reasons (mostly it becomes a performance hit and a compatibility issue when the majority of people don't even care about this issue).

> - add this concept aside. For example, just as there are .gitignore or
>   .gitattributes files, we could have a .gitdates that would store in a
>   human-readable manner the modification time of the files in its
>   directory.

Yep, this is a good solution. Check out metastore:

  http://david.hardeman.nu/software.php

-Peff