[Monotone-devel] Re: "Wrong" (current time) creation date after checkout

[Graydon Hoare]

Thomas Haas wrote:

> I am using motone 0.27 Cygwin on Windows XP.
>
> The creation date (ls -l) on files checked out (using mtn checkout or
> mtn revert) is set to the current time. My expectation is the creation
> date on files being the same after checkout (or revert) as during commit.
>
> What is the rational of this behavior? Is there a way to restore the
> original date of the file (mtn attr)?

Monotone does not track any file times by default, nor does it track 
owners, permissions, ACLs, or any other extended attributes of files. 
You can extend it to do so using attributes if you like. We'd welcome 
patches that provide such tracking, as a standard extension for users 
that decide to use it.

The rationale for not including it in the default set of information 
tracked is simply an argument from minimality: computer time is 
unreliable and not always something people care to track or think about. 
Some filesystems don't maintain meaningful notions of time at all.

-graydon