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Re: File date/time stamps seems unworkable

From: Peter McNab <mcnab_p_at_melbpc.org.au>
Date: 2007-03-01 15:12:38 CET

webinfo@getsoft.com wrote:
> My previous Version Control System handled this as I would expect, so
> this has come as quite a nasty shock. I really don't want the exact same
> files on different PC's to have different time stamps, and I can't see
> that I'm being unreasonable.
>
> Backup programs preserve time stamps for a good reason and its like
> saying they might as well not bother.
Hopefully you know about using SVN Update and are not doing an SVN
Checkout after each commit?

Consider for a moment two users straddling the international date line.
They ping-pong a file back and forth via a repo on Sourceforge or
wherever. As they alternately make mods, commit and the other person
updates, modifies and commits they each see their local PC's date-time
of when the updated file lands on their machine. File date-times
*relationships* are maintained on their system so the latest changed
file gets a later date than the previously changed file.
This works well for a huge majority of users, perhaps because with SVN
you rapidly move beyond ever looking at date times to see which is the
latest version. Update is you friend.
Make or Build or whatever the process is that generates output depending
on date stamps will ignore files in your WC that it compiled before and
just drag in those files that changed on the updates since the last
"compile".
Imagine the confusion if files came with tomorrow's or yesterday's date
time.

You should be able to completely drop using backup software to restore
your WCs. Make sure you backup the repo regularly though.
If you find you are regularly leaving uncommitted work that you want to
backup then consider committing these to a branch in the repo.
Avoid-avoid-avoid putting autogenerated files under revision control.
Unless they are to be shared for special purposes its a recipe for lots
of letters to the user's list.

Peter
> If I'd been aware of this and other issues I mentioned on my blog post
> http://blog.surfulater.com/2007/02/28/get-up-and-running-with-tortoisesvn-and-subversion-in-15-minutes/
> I probably would have stayed with my previous VCS.
>
>

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Received on Thu Mar 1 15:12:57 2007

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