Re: Git for Windows: mingw.c's strange usage of creation time as ctime?

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 4, 2017, 02:23 UTC
Message-ID: <20171004022352.GJ19555@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <08983090-07d2-cfe4-dd90-ab4887b83893@syntevo.com>

+git-for-windows Hi Marc,

Marc Strapetz wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> compat/mingw.c assigns the Windows file creation time [1] to Git's
> ctime fields at line 591 and at line 705:
>
> buf->st_ctime = filetime_to_time_t(&(fdata.ftCreationTime));
>
> ftCreationTime > ftLastWriteTime is actually possible after copying
> a file, so it makes sense to include this timestamp somehow in the
> Index, but I think it would be better to use the maximum of
> ftLastWriteTime and ftCreationTime here which is less confusing and
> closer to Unix's ctime:
>
> buf->st_ctime = max(buf->st_mtime,
>                     filetime_to_time_t(&(fdata.ftCreationTime));

Can you say more about the practical effect? Is this causing a bug in practice, is it a bug waiting to happen, or is it making the code difficult to understand without any ill effect expected at run time? (Any of those three is a valuable kind of feedback to offer --- I'm just trying to figure out which one you mean.)

By the way, do you have core.trustctime set to true or false?

Thanks, Jonathan

> -Marc
>
> [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365739(v=vs.85).aspx