Subject: Re: timestamps not git-cloned

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 08:48:41 +0800

Well all I know is from the simple user who does e.g.,
# aptitude install linux-doc-2.6.26
# ls -lt /usr/share/doc/linux-doc-2.6.26/Documentation/
he thinks "gosh, can't tell what's new vs. what hasn't changed in years".

OK, now I know why this is tolerable upstream: they all use git.

But for the lowly user downstream who gets what git-archive produces,
it seems like a step backwards: "who threw away the timestamp of when
each file was last changed?".

OK, http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/ContentLimitations says this is by design.

And OK, thinking "file by file" is old fashioned, I read. The non-git
end user should just get used to reading ChangeLogs, if any, and stop
doing ls -lt.

But you must admit, /usr/share/doc/linux-doc-2.6.26/Documentation/
etc. are aimed for reading without git.

Anyways, if just in case any individual file modification time
information can still be pried from the 40 byte IDs or whatever, I
would suggest using it by default in git-archive at least, and maybe
even git-clone etc.

Just letting you know my 'valuable first impressions'. I expect once I
start smoking more of this "git" stuff, I too will become comfortably
numb to aforementioned lowly user problem, so you would never know
unless I hereby first told you before it was too late.