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Re: WriteFile() whacks st_atime patch


On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 10:33:21AM -0400, Jason Tishler wrote:
>Corinna,
>
>On Mon, Sep 17, 2001 at 06:37:34PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> since your both patches to set the file time will probably result in a
>> performance loss
>
>You are being too gentle, my proposed patches will definitely be a
>performance hit.  The only question that remains is how much?
>
>> and since only a few applications have a problem with
>> the windows behaviour... what do you think about conditionalize your
>> patch using a global flag (e.g. force_unix_ftime_behaviour) which is
>> set to FALSE by default?
>
>The above may be a good compromise.  However, this means that one must be
>careful that *all* necessary apps are built appropriately.  For example,
>the mutt maintainer (currently you) and the procmail maintainer (most
>likely me) will have to both link against the proposed setftime.o.
>Otherwise, the mailbox access times will not behave Posix-like.
>Furthermore, if someone (occasionally) uses an apps not built
>appropriately to access/process their mailbox files, then they may get
>"transient," unexpected behavior.
>
>At the risk of Chris's wrath...  Um, er, what about a new CYGWIN setting
>so that my proposed patches can affect all apps or no apps?  In this
>way, users can choose their policy -- strict Posix st_atime compliance
>at the expense of performance or vice versa.

I actually proposed the link option since it fixes the problem at the
source.  If you link mutt with setftime.o you will not be constantly
saying "Didn't you read the FAQ, you idiot?  You have to set
CYGWIN=ftime!" mutt will just work.

The issue of mutt not working correctly has been a hot mailing list
topic.  However, I don't think that the issue of atime not being set the
same way UNIX sets it has really been of generic enough interest to
warrant YA CYGWIN variable.

cgf


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