On 04/06/2015 16:48, Paul Eggert wrote:
An
option along these lines sounds like it would be useful, thanks.
But I have some confusions and/or problems with the suggestion.
First, the patch doesn't alter the documentation, which is
typically the hardest part of any change like this. The
documentation should give an example of how the new option would
be useful.
Second, I'm having trouble seeing how to use the option (and this
is probably because of the first item...). How does the
maintainer keep track of a clamped mtime? Isn't that a hassle to
maintain? Can't 'tar' do this for you, instead of your having to
do it?
Regarding the second issue: I believe the typical use would be to
pass in a main packaging date (such as the date of
/debian/changelog or the date of the top entry in that file), then
any files newer than that (recompiled files) would get the fixed
timestamp, while older files (such as manpages and default
conffiles copied from the source tree) would keep their older
timestamps, which might be the same over several package versions,
thus reducing the size of binary deltas between deb files and
improving the quality of conffile handling.
tar of cause has no memory, and should not have. It is a tool
that relies totally on its explicit inputs to produce the same
output from the same input. Anyway, tar would have very little
chance to remember results across different buildds picking up the
same source package.
Enjoy
Jakob
--
Jakob Bohm, CIO, Partner, WiseMo A/S. https://www.wisemo.com
Transformervej 29, 2860 Søborg, Denmark. Direct +45 31 13 16 10
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