Tracking file metadata in git -- fix metastore or enhance git?

[Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com>]

Hi all,


as you know, it's not possible to track metadata like mtime etc via
git natively. metastore exists, but its binary storage format is
merge-unfriendly. The author knows and acknowledges this but lacks the
time to fix it.

We might try and fix up metastore to use ASCII with BASE64 for xattr
etc instead of the current binary format. metastore supports versioned
stores so it will handle this gracefully. Before going down this path,
I wanted to ask if anyone would be interested to implement this in git
directly. Obviously, an optional and native way is vastly preferable
to a third-party tool. Both for reasons of potential bit-rot and more
users. Yet, we lack the confidence to do this in git directly
ourselves.

If this is implemented in git, the type(s) of metadata to track should
be fine-grained and fully optional, of course.


Any and all feedback appreciated,
Richard