Modified dates on branched files

christian · Post by **christian** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 12:18 pm

Branched a Vault folder and noticed that the modified date of the files on the branch have all been changed to "now". Surely this is not correct, as the files have not been modified. While I know Source safe has inadequate support for branches, I did compare this to the behaviour in Source safe and verified that Source safe does not update the modified date of the branched files.

Can you provide a good reason for changing the file-modified date on the branch? If not then shouldn't this be "fixed" so as to preserve the file modified date from the trunk.

Thanks
Christian

dan · Post by **dan** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 12:50 pm

I suppose it is a philosophical difference - the files are new in that they were branched to a new location, even though the contents did not change. So, their remote date is correct, in that this node in the tree was created at branch time. However, an argument could be made that since they were not modified, their modification times should remain what they were.

Is this causing an actual problem for you, or is it just something that doesn't seem right?

christian · Post by **christian** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 1:04 pm

dan wrote: Is this causing an actual problem for you, or is it just something that doesn't seem right?

Not causing me a problem - just looks kinda wierd. Plus you lose some potentially useful info to be able to [easily] determine the date when the file was branch versus the date when it was last modified.

Christian

Post by **jclausius** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 1:13 pm

Christian:

The information is available, but involves some interpretation. If you look at the history, the version n-1 is the date of last modification and version n is the date of the branch.

christian · Post by **christian** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 1:34 am

Hi Jeff,
Not sure I follow this when viewing history. I select a file on the branch and view history - I see only one date column; history item n-1 is obviously the history that applies to the file just before the branch and its date equates to the remote date (the date of the action in Vault) while history item n is again the remote date. What am I doing wrong?

Also you must agree that the modified date of the original file being available from the main display in Vault would be much easier to interrogate?

Christian

Post by **jclausius** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 8:49 am

The item was branched at the remote date for version n. The item was last modified at the remote date for version n - 1.

Basically, a branch creates a new file system object ( for the branched file) and "revs" the version number. The remote date on this version is the date of the branch.

So when viewing history versions 1 to n-1 are the history entries from the source of the branch. Version n is the new history for the branched item.

christian · Post by **christian** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 9:39 am

Right I follow now (just being a bit slow). However, I do think its a bit on the clunky side.

Thanks for discussing this one.
Christian