Comment 10 for bug 245170

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Andrew Schulman
<email address hidden> wrote:
>> Note that bug #488724  was fixed to address workflows involving building from sources via a Makefile.
>> Restoring modification time for files will break these workflows and we certainly don't want to make it
>> the default mode for bzr.
>
> Restoring the original modification times of all files, source and
> generated, in the working tree would certainly not break make projects.
> On the contrary, it would cause make to figure out correctly which files
> were newer than which other ones.

Actually that is only true when you have a central clock; when you
have multiple clocks - and bzr has one clock per committing machine -
then its entirely possible - if not likely - that one user will commit
something which a previous commit claimed a newer date, and then the
file is seen to go backwards by make; not triggering a build and
making a terrible mess.

The current approach has the following properties:
 - times start out all the same (checkouts of generated files do not
do spurious builds)
 - all modifications by bzr move the timestamp forward, because local
system time is used (other users cannot break builds due to
timestamps).

ACL's etc would be nice, but are orthogonal IMO.

-Rob