Re: Timestamp handling in checkout vs update

[Eric Siegerman]

On Mon, Jan 07, 2002 at 04:13:46PM -0800, Harper, Don wrote:
> I have observed and read in the archives that cvs sets file timestamps to
> the commit times when doing a checkout operation but sets them to the
> current time when doing an update.  What is the rationale for this?

The update behaviour is so that a subsequent "make" will notice
that the file has changed, and rebuild anything that depends on
it.  One wants this even if it was a "cvs update -C".  Sometimes
CVS's behaviour can be a pain -- but doing "cvs update; make" and
having the newly-fetched changes NOT included in the build can be
more of one!

The checkout behaviour is because partial makes aren't (presumably)
an issue on an initial checkout, and so it's (presumably) safe to
set the files' timestamps to something more useful to humans.

--

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|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
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