Re: Portability of `cp -p' (was: `cp' don't preserve timestamps by default on windows-xp)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Reiner Steib <address@hidden>
> Cc: Zhang Wei <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:44:18 +0200
> 
> I'm not aware of any cp implementation that doesn't support `-p' and I
> didn't find anything wrt this in (info "(autoconf)Limitations of Usual
> Tools").  Do you have any example of a cp without `-p'?

The original Unix `cp' didn't, and I don't know what ancient ports
people are using on Windows.

Anyway, I found a way to copy Lisp files without relying on -p, and
installed a suitable change in the CVS.  As a nice side effect, we no
longer copy to the destination directory unrelated files, such as the
CVS subdirectory and README and ChangeLog files, just like on Unix.

> > And I'd like us to understand the problem (which doesn't seem to
> > happen to me) better before we consider solutions.
> 
> (I agree with this.)

The OP sent me a transcript of the copy commands after adding -v to
the `cp' switches, which clearly show that the order of copying is
arbitrary and therefore cannot be relied upon.