RE: [jamboost] Timestamps

From: Markus Scherschanski (mscherschanski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-06-06 02:42:16

Hi David,

> If you can keep track of everything that gets built *and* you 
> have access
> to something which can modify the files' mod. time, *and* you 
> don't mind
> inaccurate but consistent mod. times, you can change the mod 
> time of any
> target that still has the same or earlier time as any of its 
> sources after
> its build action completes.
> 
> It's a bit of a hack, but I think it should work for 
> real-world builds.

Okay, that would be a solution, but it fails when those files are copied
between FAT and NTFS, doesn't it?

> > > I don't see any way to detect false matches without going to
> > > some scheme
> > > that avoids timestamps completely in favor of using the real file
> > > contents.
> >
> > Yeah, that would be good, MD5 or CRC32?! ;)
> >
> > But that would be rather slow and not secure in some 
> unfortune cases.
> 
> Yeah, I would rather do the mod-time hack above and only use 
> MD5 as a last
> resort when we really think the file needs updating, because 
> my impression
> is that it would be faster.

But you even have always to build all MD5-sums even for those cases.

> I'm not sure there's a real security problem, but SK can say 
> better than I.

With this algorithms there is always a rest probability that two files have
the same checksum even when they differ. This prop is with MD5 at 1:2^64
(rather small) but not impossible.

> However, I am somewhat inclined to leave this sort of rebuild-accuracy
> concern to Scons, and to concentrate on higher-level build 
> architecture for Boost.Build.

But basics have to be okay too. I heard several times about this problem.

I think this is how someone in GNU-Make solves the problem:
http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/351/2000/5/0/3776781/

> A conservative scheme which treats targets as outdated if the
> sources were modified within the accuracy window is probably 
> good enough for us, for the time being.

Okay for me, but I'm not sure at all. Steven?

Regards,
Markus

Further links:
http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2000-July/002491.html
http://www.fileware.co.uk/manuals/cmdsync/timestamps.htm