Re: Git diff-file bug?

[Scott Batchelor <scott.batchelor@gmail.com>]

Many thanks to all who have responded to my question.
I have found that something is, indeed, modifying the inodes for all
the files in my repository. Our systems administrator executes a
backup using "tar" with the "--atime-preserve" flag. It is this flag
that modifies the "changed time" in the inode, and causes gitk to show
that all my files have changed.
Thanks,
Scott.

On 28 September 2012 21:40, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Scott Batchelor <scott.batchelor@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I'm fairly new to git and am witnessing some strange behavior with git
>> that I suspect may be a bug. Can anyone set my mind at rest.
>>
>> Every so often (I've not quite figured out the exact set of
>> circumstances yet)
>
> Figure that circumstances out.  That is the key to the issue.
> Something in your workflow is futzing with the inode data of the
> files in your working tree behind your back.  It sometimes is a
> virus scanner.
>
> "git diff-*" plumbing commands are meant to be used after running
> "git update-index --refresh" once in the program and when the caller
> of these commands (in your case, gitk) knows that any change in the
> information returned by lstat(2) on the paths in the working tree
> files since that call indicate real changes to the files.
>
> "git status" internally runs an equivalent of "--refresh" before it
> goes to find changes, so after running it, until that something
> smudges the inode data behind your back, "gitk" will not be
> confused.
>