Re: git bugs

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Jun 11, 2008, 02:12 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0806101909430.3101@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <832adb090806101904k5eba3bd6p277c955b1782afbe@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Ben Lynn wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
> Sorry, but if we're assuming no one is touching the files while we're
> updating the index (including writing it to disk), why does it matter
> whether we use the time of first or last write? In fact, if a index
> write takes a long time, using the last write time as the mtime would
> be beneficial for the race condition stuff.

Oh, if you assume nobody is touching the files as the index is created, none of this matters.

So if *that* was your only race worry, then git should already be perfectly fine.

The issue with the timestamp of the index only happens if somebody ends up modifying the files that are being indexed _as_ they are indexed. Quite frankly, git will notice that too in just about all possible cases, but if the size stays the same and the modification time ends up still being smaller than the final index mtime (because writing the index took so long!), then you might miss some modifications that would otherwise be noticed.

		Linus