reset file modification time when go back in time?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2007-11-06 14:00, dhruva <dhruvakm at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 11/6/07, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>>> I was wondering if the last modification time for each file
>>> in a changeset be stored and restored when the changesets are
>>> applied back?  This would prevent the recompilation/build of
>>> projects.
>>
>> In a distributed SCM, this is *very* tricky, at best.  See the
>> FAQ on the wiki for some of the reasons why this is tricky:
>
> Instead of having the timestamp inside the changeset (as they
> are copied to remote locations during clone, push and pull),
> that information could be stored locally as a separate
> metadata. When ever a changeset is applied, the timestamp
> details can be fetched from that file and applied. The file
> storing the time stamp details can get updated only when new
> change sets are pulled/cloned into the local repository. This
> file will never get copied when repos are cloned.  Since time
> stamp makes sense only locally, with my limited knowledge of
> mercurial internals, I feel it is doable.
>
> What are your views on the above idea?

It is all based on the false assumption that "timestamps only
make sense locally".  They don't.  Timestamps are useful for
tracking when something was committed too :/