Tracking file metadata in git -- fix metastore or enhance git?

Hi all,

as you know, it's not possible to track metadata like mtime etc via git natively. metastore exists, but its binary storage format is merge-unfriendly. The author knows and acknowledges this but lacks the time to fix it.

We might try and fix up metastore to use ASCII with BASE64 for xattr etc instead of the current binary format. metastore supports versioned stores so it will handle this gracefully. Before going down this path, I wanted to ask if anyone would be interested to implement this in git directly. Obviously, an optional and native way is vastly preferable to a third-party tool. Both for reasons of potential bit-rot and more users. Yet, we lack the confidence to do this in git directly ourselves.

If this is implemented in git, the type(s) of metadata to track should be fine-grained and fully optional, of course.

Any and all feedback appreciated, Richard