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openhacker / xar

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File creation dates are reset on archive/restore #10

Closed GoogleCodeExporter closed 9 years ago

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. archive a file with a creation date way in the past
2. restore the file
3. check the creation date

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

While many archivers (pax and cpio come to mind) also reset the creation date, 
I would hazard 
that this is incorrect behavior. An archive shouldn't change fundamental 
metadata about the file. 
It was, in fact, created earlier.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

The HEAD of SVN. Mac OS X 10.4.8 on a PPC

Original issue reported on code.google.com by nik%inik...@gtempaccount.com on 15 Mar 2007 at 5:16

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
ctime is not creation date.  ctime is "Time of last status change."  It is more 
of a
filesystem attribute than a file attribute.  On a properly functioning system, 
ctime
should be updated by the operating system whenever a change to the inode's 
fields
change, which clearly an archiver does.

Original comment by bbraun on 16 Mar 2007 at 1:07