preserving timestamps on installation

preserving timestamps on installation

[Andy Wingo]

Hey folks,

Development Guile support compilation of Scheme files, finally. But the
deal is that it will load the source file instead if the mtimes on the
Scheme and compiled files differ.

Where automake comes in is that installing a file touches its mtime,
always, not preserving the mtime of the file being installed.

What I would suggest is, given that automake ships with an install.sh,
add the -p option to install.sh, corresponding to install(1), and use it
by default. I can't think of any downsides.

Cheers,

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: preserving timestamps on installation

[Peter Johansson]

> What I would suggest is, given that automake ships with an install.sh,
> add the -p option to install.sh, corresponding to install(1), and use it
> by default. I can't think of any downsides.
>
>   
That sounds like a bad idea.

Imagine the following (not unlikely) sequence:
1) install header.h
2) modify header.h
3) build some other package using the installed header.h
4) install the modified header.h
5) issue make in 'some other package'

Step 5 will not cause a recompilation because it looks like the newly 
installed header is old as 2) and 'other package' was built at 3) which 
is later.

If there is no difference between header.h in install 1) and 4) your 
suggestion might be a good idea, but to get that behavior you can use 
`install.sh -C'.

Cheers,

-- 
Peter Johansson

svndigest maintainer, http://dev.thep.lu.se/svndigest
yat maintainer,       http://dev.thep.lu.se/yat

Re: preserving timestamps on installation

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Andy,

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> Where automake comes in is that installing a file touches its mtime,
> always, not preserving the mtime of the file being installed.

Could it be solved with an `install-hook' target that would touch all
the installed `.go' files?

Thanks,
Ludo'.

Re: preserving timestamps on installation

[Andy Wingo]

On Sat 06 Jun 2009 15:21, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Hi Andy,
>
> Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> Where automake comes in is that installing a file touches its mtime,
>> always, not preserving the mtime of the file being installed.
>
> Could it be solved with an `install-hook' target that would touch all
> the installed `.go' files?

That's what I do now, though I'm not sure if the -r argument to `touch'
is portable.

A
-- 
http://wingolog.org/