Re: Idea: Automatically correct timestamps

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 10:38 PM Paul Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sun, 2019-06-09 at 18:24 -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> > ...
> > In many cases I suspect this would eliminate calls for using md5
> > hashes and special state; I suspect many of those requests are really
> > trying to deal with problems of clock slew that this proposal
> > resolves.
>
> Hm.  Maybe people have just given up reporting this problem but
> honestly I can't remember the last time I had anyone ask questions here
> or on StackOverflow that are related to clock skew.  I sort of thought
> it was a solved problem.
>
> Most of the requests I see these days that would require a "last state
> database" wouldn't be helped by md5 checks: mainly they're asking for
> things like rebuilding targets automatically when compiler options have
> changed etc.  Things like that can be done today with a lot of fancy
> trickery but people would rather it "just worked".

+1. I'd welcome a make that is aware of option changes. It has jumped
up and bit me several times over the years.

Clock skew is another problem I seem to often encounter after editing
a source file on one machine, and then scp'ing to another machine. If
the db helps with this problem, then it is killing two birds with one
stone.

Jeff