Re: CVS file modtime reporting - bug or feature?

--- In [email protected], Guy Rouillier <guyr-ml1@...> wrote:
>
> Oliver Giesen wrote:
> >> Here's the scenario.  Start with a file from CVS that is a 
> >> couple years 
> >> old, like AUTHORS or COPYING.  The ModTime column properly 
> >> reports the 
> >> 2004 date.  Now make a trivial change and save it.  The file 
> >> timestamp 
> >> in the OS is of course updated to the current time, and that 
gets 
> >> reflected in the ModTime column.
> >>
> >> Finally, select this same file and use the "Update" command 
> >> to "get the 
> >> clean copy", i.e., revert back to the 2 year old version in 
CVS.  It 
> >> correctly gets the CVS version, but the modtime both in the 
> >> filesystem 
> >> **and** in CVS/Entries is updated to the time you did the 
update, not 
> >> the original timestamp from CVS!
> >>
> >> Is this the way it has always worked, or is this a CvsNT bug?  I 
> >> certainly wasn't expecting this behavior.
> > 
> > Yes, that's the way CVS works (not only CVSNT). It only gets the 
original commit timestamp on initial Checkout, Update will always set 
it to the time of the last update.
> > CVSNT nowadays has a -t option to the Update command (already 
surfaced in WinCvs on the Update Options tab) which will use the last 
commit timestamp instead but that requires a CVSNT server as well.
> 
> Oliver, thank you for enlightening me.  Sigh, one more thing to add 
to 
> the to-do list for gCvs.  That's really odd, I wonder why CVS 
elected to 
>   do it that way.  It has the real timestamp, obviously, since it 
got it 
> on initial checkout.
> 
> -- 
> Guy Rouillier
>

I suppose CVS does that to better integrate with build systems that 
rely on timestamps. Imagine a case like:

- Change something
- Build
- Get the clean copy (cvs up -C)
- Build

The second build needs the affected files to be newer than at the 
time of the first build, or it will not happen. (At least VC++ 6.0 
and GNU make show this behavior.)


Kind regards,

Kirill






 
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