The Perl script shown in this post sets the mtime (and atime) to the last commit time. Works very well and needs only 7 sec for the whole webwml repository on my notebook.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2458042/restore-a-files-modification-time-in-git# I think we only need this run once, after that the perl code for generating the footer can grab the correct mtime. -- regards Thomas