From: Junio C Hamano Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:16:24 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Make use of stat.ctime configurable Message-ID: <7vbq0ho5g7.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Linus Torvalds writes: > On Mon, 28 Jul 2008, David Brown wrote: > >> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 08:31:28AM +0200, Alex Riesen wrote: >> >> > because there are situations where it produces too much false >> > positives. Like when file system crawlers keep changing it when >> > scanning and using the ctime for marking scanned files. >> >> That's interesting, since most backup software uses the ctime to determine >> file changes. > > It really is just Beagle that is (was? I can dream) a piece of > unbelievable crap. > > Anybody who uses extended attributes as part of a indexing scheme is just > insane. Modifying the file you are indexing is not just fundamentally > wrong to begin with, but it will then also be incredibly inefficient to > read those entries one at a time. It's a typo and you are saying it _is_ fundamentally wrong, aren't you? If you are prepared to pick up new files, you need to crawl everywhere anyway, so if the xattr is used to leave a mark "The last time I looked at this file was this" in the file itself, it does not sound too bad to me. It would be irritating that it touches ctime, though, but I do not use it so it is not my problem ;-) http://beagle-project.org/FAQ "Do I really need extended attributes?" talks about BEAGLE_DISABLE_XATTR environment variable and interestingly it says disabling use of xattr would slow you down.