Re: C-x v u via *.~REV.~ reset file date to 1970-01-01

[Andre Spiegel <spiegel@gnu.org>]

On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 04:26, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> Visit a file in CVS and type a SPC and then remove it and save the
> file. VC generate a backup file dated 1970-01-01:
> 
> jas@latte:~/src/libidn$ ls -la Makefile.am*
> -rw-r--r--    1 jas      staff        1959 2003-08-26 04:22 Makefile.am
> -rw-r--r--    1 jas      staff        1959 1970-01-01 01:00 Makefile.am.~1.91.~
> jas@latte:~/src/libidn$ 

I see this on my system (Debian) too, but it's clearly an error.  VC
creates the backup file using copy-file with KEEP-TIME non-nil
(vc-hooks.el, line 594).  The doc string of copy-file does mention that
KEEP-TIME doesn't work on all systems, but I would assume GNU/Linux is
not one of them, and even if it doesn't work on a system, 1970-01-01 is
clearly not an acceptable date.

Something must be broken in copy-file, fileio.c.  Ken Raeburn's change
of 2002-07-15 (version 1.454) may be a candidate, since it's the last
time the keep-time stuff was changed, but I'm not knowledgable in this
area.  Could somebody else please have a look?