On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 14:10:23 -0600
"Shaun Jackman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The bug probably shouldn't be closed. I would tag it wontfix, and post
> it on debian-devel for discussion. 

I'm with you for reopening and reclassifying, but I don't mix well with
'-devel', so far anyway.  Irreconcilable humor differences, maybe.

> That dpkg-source doesn't preserve
> time stamps is a straight-forward bug.

Has it been reported already?  

> Any conversion performed on a regular, automated basis doesn't warrant
> updating the time stamp. However, if a developer runs help2man once by
> hand to create a man page, I would update the time stamp.

That's reasonable.

> > Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're saying about Debian's patch
> > system.  Did you mean that all patches, old or new, are "born
> > yesterday" on unpacking?
> 
> Exactly. Time stamp information is meta-data, and a lot of mediums
> don't preserve meta-data. For example, when a document is attached to
> an email, typically the time stamps, permissions, et cetera are all
> lost. 

That sounds like another argument in favor of .zip or .tgz attachements,
when necessary.

> Likewise for the Debian diff. All the Debian packaging,
> including documentation, is packaged in the diff, and by default,
> debuild does not preserve the time stamp meta-data in the diff. I
> don't know why this is though, because diff does, by default, preserve
> the time stamp meta-data.

A question...  my typo fixes all use '.diff' files.  I used to use the
default 'diff' format which looked like this:

        % echo hello world > /tmp/A
        % echo Jello World > /tmp/B
        % diff /tmp/[AB]
        1c1
        < hello world
        ---
        > Jello World

...then as per the useful critique of C. Wilson, I started using the '-u'
switch:

        % diff -u /tmp/[AB]
        --- /tmp/A      2006-04-26 02:43:41.000000000 -0400
        +++ /tmp/B      2006-04-26 02:44:00.000000000 -0400
        @@ -1 +1 @@
        -hello world
        +Jello World

Now it looks like the latter 'diff -u' keeps a time stamp, while the
former (default) 'diff' does not.  But you're saying that the default
of 'diff' does preserve time stamps.  Seems like a mix-up.

Either way though, I'd agree that it would be useful for our purposes to
have time stamps in patches, unless there are compelling though seldom
heard reasons not to.  


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