Appeal to respect the development history and time tracking

Becker, Mischa J mischa.becker at kroger.com
Tue Aug 25 23:40:33 UTC 2015


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mercurial On Behalf Of Adrian Klaver
> Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2015 1:22 PM
> To: Arne Babenhauserheide; mercurial at selenic.com
> Cc: Mosc
> Subject: Re: Appeal to respect the development history and time tracking
>
> On 08/25/2015 08:18 AM, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> > Am Dienstag, 25. August 2015, 07:26:45 schrieb Adrian Klaver:
> >>> At least add warning that all the date and time stamps of all files
> >>> and all directories would be destroyed _forever_ after using
> Mercurial SCM.
> >>
> >> What are you talking about?
> >>
> >> Or better yet, can you provide a coherent example?
> >
> > Even though I disagree with Mosc (especially on the apes thing), I can
> > provide an example:
> >
> > I use deft-mode[1] to organize my writings. It shows and filters text
> > files in a directory. For each file it shows the title (first line)
> > and the data, and it sorts by date.
> >
> > This weekend I had partial failure of the data on my system USB stick,
> > including that folder. Some files were lost, so I recloned the deft
> > directory -- and all files had the same date, so the ordering was
> wrong.
>
> Alright, I see. I would expect cloning to change the timestamps, it just
> a variation of copying files, which does the same thing.
>
> Still not sure what the problem is?

"Perfect tool must accurately save and accurately restore creation and modification date and time of the files and directories ..."

I think Mosc is complaining about the fact that Mercurial, and other VCSs, only consider the file contents important and don't track file meta data like Date Created and Date Modified.  I myself was surprised to discover, the first time I updated to an older revision, that files had a modified date of right then instead of the dates they had when the revision was committed.

As someone who's never used make, the fact that file foo was modified a year ago at noon when committed as revision 123 is important and useful data while the fact that foo was updated to revision 123 at 10:30 this morning is unimportant and meaningless. I rarely even bother looking at file dates now-days because they rarely tell me anything I consider helpful.  (Note: I understand Matt's point and am not suggesting this should be changed.)

>>>> At least add warning that all the date and time stamps of all files
>>>> and all directories would be destroyed forever after using Mercurial
>>>> SCM.

Assuming it isn't already somewhere on the website, it might be worth clarifying that Mercurial is not a backup system and as such it doesn't restore files with their original created and modified dates like a backup system does.

Mischa Becker

________________________________

This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain information that is confidential and protected by law from unauthorized disclosure. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.


More information about the Mercurial mailing list