Re: Feature request: Add --mtime option to git archive

["René Scharfe" <l.s.r@web.de>]

Am 17.02.23 um 16:43 schrieb Raul Rangel:
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 7:04 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>>
>>> A similar option in is to simply start using "0" in the meantime, like:
>>>
>>> diff --git a/archive.c b/archive.c
>>> index 81ff76fce9..48d89785c3 100644
>>> --- a/archive.c
>>> +++ b/archive.c
>>> @@ -470,7 +470,7 @@ static void parse_treeish_arg(const char **argv,
>>>               archive_time = commit->date;
>>>       } else {
>>>               commit_oid = NULL;
>>> -             archive_time = time(NULL);
>>> +             archive_time = 0;
>>>       }
>>>
>>>       tree = parse_tree_indirect(&oid);
>>>
>>> Nobody will complain about changing the byte-for-byte format, since by definition it
>>> was already changing once per second (cue somebody complaining that they
>>> have been using LD_PRELOAD tricks to simulate --mtime).

And how are you now going to tell the current time on a remote git
server? ;)

>>> I do wonder if people would complain (both with the patch above and with
>>> brian's proposal) that the resulting tarballs extract everything with a
>>> date in 1970. That's not functionally a problem, but it looks kind of
>>> weird in "ls -l".

Yes, 21st century artifacts being sent back in time looks a bit strange.
GNU tar and bsdtar provide option -m to ignore mtimes when extracting.

>> And owned by root:root ;-)
>
> I fully support both of those easy changes. Only reason I proposed
> --mtime was that https://reproducible-builds.org/docs/archives/
> recommends setting SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, but honestly for my purposes I
> would always use 0 and root:root.

git archive already records root as user and group.

>> I am sure people would complain.  What matters is if these
>> complaints have merit, and in this case, I doubt it.  I especially
>> like your "it has been already changing once per second" reasoning
>> for this change.

I find it quite convincing as well.

René