From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:33:35 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] treewide: migrate from legacy utime.h to utimensat
Message-ID: <xmqqo6evpeds.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <pull.2209.git.1787322203.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

"Alexey Samsonov via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

> utime() function for setting access/modification time for files (and a
> corresponding <utime.h> header) have been officially removed from POSIX
> starting from POSIX.1-2024. While existing system library implementations
> still provide this function for compatibility reasons, its implementation
> may be removed in the future, or otherwise degrade over time. Some newer
> libc implementations (e.g. LLVM-libc, currently under development) don't
> provide utime() function at all.
>
> This PR switches the git codebase to recommended alternative: utimensat()
> POSIX function (which supports nanosecond-level precision) from <fcntl.h>,
> and, as a possible fallback for older systems compatibility, utimes()
> function from <sys/stat.h>. It also provides the corresponding MinGW
> wrapper.
>
> The alternative is to unconditionally use utimes() where possible, but given
> that utimensat is available in glibc starting from 2007, and on BSD systems
> since 2012 or so, it makes sense to use the newer variant by default.

I hear that Apple has supported it since macOS 10.13 High Sierra,
which came out in 2017 and reached EOL in 2020, so we should be safe
there as well.