on perservation of timestamps

Signed-off-by: Mattias Andrée <maandree@operamail.com>

1 files changed, 34 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/using-git.texinfo b/using-git.texinfo
index 58a66a3..3722ec0 100644
--- a/using-git.texinfo
+++ b/using-git.texinfo
@@ -1302,7 +1302,8 @@ is annoying.
 @chapter Features
 
 @menu
-* Git and permissions:
+* Git and permissions::
+* Git and timestamps::
 @end menu
 
 
@@ -1352,6 +1353,38 @@ to how a specific permission.
 
 
 
+@node Git and timestamps
+@section Git and timestamps
+
+One of Git's features is that it does
+not have the feature@footnote{Yes, that
+it does not have it. Do not be confused,
+not have features are often grater features.}
+of perserving timestamps.
+
+Perserving modification time on files is
+considered harmful. Consider if Git were
+to perserve the modification time. If you
+have compiled the program, and then checkout
+en earlier commit, perhaps another branch,
+and you build it again, now your compiled
+files from the other branch has a newer time
+stamp then the source in the current branch
+and the files will not build unless you
+force them to build, which you more than
+likely will forget. So you may observe a
+behaviour of your program that is not defined
+by the checkout source code.
+
+This is way Git sets the timestamp to the
+current time on every file it modifies, but
+only those. Files that have not changes will
+not change timestamp so the build system
+will not rebuild them unless there is some
+other reason it needs to.
+
+
+
 @node Beyond Git
 @chapter Beyond Git