Paul Eggert <egg...@cs.ucla.edu> writes: > On 12/28/24 04:38, Simon Josefsson via Gnulib discussion list wrote: >> The tarball use the same >> mtime for all files. >> So I don't understand this concern. What problem do you see if you >> don't perform those steps? > > I must be missing something because for many tarballs it's obvious > that one shouldn't use the same mtime for all files. > > The main reason I don't set all timestamps to 1 (0 doesn't work > because some 'make' implementations incorrectly treat 0 as meaning the > file is missing!) in distribution tarballs is that some 'make's treat > equal timestamps as meaning the destination is out of date and needs > to be rebuilt. (Although POSIX does not require this 'make' behavior, > it encourages it.)
Which 'make' behave like that? GNU make doesn't rebuild a dependency if the mtime is the same as the source. I think I've made some release tarballs using --mtime and nobody complained, but maybe everyone tested with GNU make (or its behaviour is now common). I'm about to push out a new release of 'libidn' and I'm inclined to try --mtime (as well as --format=posix) to see if anyone notices. /Simon
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