On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, A. Costa wrote: > On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:24:33 +0100 > Raphael Hertzog <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=366555 > > Right now, all patched files are modified to have the same timestamp > > and the generated patches do not contain timestamps. This bug requests > > the inclusion of timestamp in patches files and that the timestamp be > > respected at unpack time. Given everything I've read in the BTS, I'm > > not sure it's a good idea. > > Could you elaborate, time permitting? No rush, especially since your > blanket message suggests there's a lot going on elsewhere. > > Note: users would be more interested in the result than the method. > Namely that the files in '/usr/share/doc/freeguide', (and some other > dirs, no doubt), all have the same undistinctive date, which is akin > to having no dates. Therefore if your (pending?) method-based critique > is accurate that the patch/timestamp method above was unfeasible, I'd > say "let's think of a better method".
The long bug log clearly says that there's no point to try to conserve timestamps for generated documentation. And I agree with that. However with the new source format we have several changes: - files in the debian directory are stored in a .tar.gz and thus we will conserve their timestamp - but files patched by one or more of the patches in debian/patches/ will always have a timestamp that advances artificially at each unpack. This is required because if we don't ajust their timestamp to a single value, the timestamp difference means that we can have tricky side-effects like regeneration of some files due to timestamp skew (e.g. when you patch *.ac or *.in files from autoconf/automake) Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
