Hello, I originally sent this message to Jim Schimpf after I found his paper on Fossil. He suggested that I should post a question to this mailing list.
I'm curious if Fossil preserves the modification (mtime) time of a file. I'm aware that this feature is controversial in that code developers see no reason for preserving this quantity. For example, the concern is that such preservation interferes with make. I want to preserve the modification time because it is meaningful to me. If I import a file that I last changed in 2010, I become confused if it shows up as being changed in December 2011. I notice that Jim Schimpf's paper mentions the preservation of the mtime in a setting. However, it might mean that it is first changed during a commit but then preserved after that first change. I also searched the archives before sending this email to the list. I found related items but I didn't see an answer to my specific question. From what I did see, I may need to infer that the timestamp is the commit time. This approach seems to destroy the mtime information. I note that the Wikipedia article about version control software comparison says the timestamp preservation is "unknown" for Fossil. It also says it is preserved for CVS but I think it's not preserved. At this time I'm preserving this information by putting my files in a tar file. The modification times of the tar file are not saved but the extracted directory and its files all have the correct times. By the way, I'm a potential user, a theoretical physicist with poor computer science skills. Harry
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