On Sat, 4 Aug 2018 at 10:26, Jeroen Demeyer <j.deme...@ugent.be> wrote: > > The fact that installs from wheels don't preserve timestamps is a very > good argument that it's OK to NOT preserve timestamps in general. Any > package which would rely on preserving timestamps would already be > broken when installing using a wheel. > > By the way, initially I thought that this was a distutils issue, but > it's clear now that it's really a pip issue.
I'd argue that the fact that the various steps and alternatives involved don't do consistent things implies that it's more of a "there's no consensus or agreed principle" issue. It's not even clear to me *what* currently gets preserved end to end, with all the copying that goes on in the process of building and installing a wheel from source[1]. As such, I'd rather see arguments based on specific real world use cases, rather than generalised "this is the right thing to do" arguments. You mention .h files and "certain Cython files". Can you give a specific example of an end to end process where the packaging toolchain's current behaviour gives demonstrably the wrong result? And given that the "reproducible builds" people have views in this area, can you also explain how your scenario would look in that context? As usual, the status quo will likely prevail in the absence of a good argument otherwise. Paul [1] Although I will say, that precisely because of all the steps and the lack of clarity over whether the timstamp is preserved throughout the process, it's arguable that the only sane value for the timestamp of the finally installed file is "when it was moved into this location". Countering that is "it's been this way for at least 6 years and no-one has complained", plus https://xkcd.com/1172/, and I still think there's a requirement to demonstrate an actual *need* for anything to change. -- Distutils-SIG mailing list -- distutils-sig@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to distutils-sig-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mm3/mailman3/lists/distutils-sig.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/mm3/archives/list/distutils-sig@python.org/message/67AMBTMCM645JPIG6PGKNDX5FAN2SMTK/
