
Linus on btime: “Let’s wait five years” (2010) - wener
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1007.2/02325.html
======
wener
Maybe it's time ?

btime I mean

Under Linux

    
    
        $ stat `which stat`
          File: '/usr/bin/stat'
          Size: 80944           Blocks: 160        IO Block: 4096   regular file
        Device: fd01h/64769d    Inode: 1196257     Links: 1
        Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
        Access: 2016-09-22 15:30:03.759501920 +0800
        Modify: 2016-02-18 21:37:47.000000000 +0800
        Change: 2016-09-08 18:17:26.611169858 +0800
         Birth: -
    

Under OSX

    
    
        $ stat `which stat`
          File: '/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/stat' -> '../../bin/gstat'
          Size: 15             	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   symbolic link
        Device: 1000004h/16777220d     	Inode: 17293277    Links: 1
        Access: (0755/lrwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (  501/   wener)   Gid: (   80/   admin)
        Access: 2016-01-26 19:01:40.000000000 +0800
        Modify: 2016-01-21 02:56:37.000000000 +0800
        Change: 2016-01-26 19:01:40.000000000 +0800
         Birth: 2016-01-21 02:56:37.000000000 +0800

~~~
guessmyname
Off Topic — Which one is better?

    
    
        $ stat `which stat`
        $ stat $(which stat)

~~~
striking
Backticks if lazy, parenthetical for complicated command lines.

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andrewSC
Haha, I read that as "...complicated command times."

~~~
striking
Close enough!

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pawadu
> Let's wait five years and see if there is actually any consensus on it being
> needed and used at all, rather than rush into something just because "we
> can".

This is why every project maintainer dreams of being Linus...

~~~
buserror
Well it IS pretty useful; that's why most of my documents start with a date
part like "160822 Something Something"; they'll still be sorted by /creation
time/ next time I make a change.

Also very useful for photographs for example, when you can edit the EXIF
without the whole lot becoming randomly sorted.

~~~
kalleboo
Yeah, I use creation time all the time on OS X. Meanwhile I can't imagine what
access time would be used for.

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0x0
atime is heavily used by traditional mail clients like mutt, to determine
which mailboxes have new mail: If atime < mtime, then there has been a write
to a file since the last read.

Because updating atime on every file access carries an IO overhead, there's a
mount option "relatime" that only updates atime if atime < mtime. This
preserves the "new mail" feature of mutt, but doesn't require atime writes for
every file read operation, which is a decent compromise.

~~~
c3833174
relatime has also been the default on Linux for many years.

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CyberShadow
Ext4, BTRFS, ZFS, NTFS, HFS+, UFS2 all track creation time. Kernel support is
past due.

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unwind
Mods: the title could do with some editing, like making it "wait _for_ ", and
a space before the year. Thanks.

~~~
OJFord
I agree, it's completely confusing, and even grammatical not.

    
    
        > For `btime`, Linus told us to "wait five years"
    

Would be my suggestion. Or perhaps:

    
    
        > Linus told us "wait five years" for `btime`

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caf
Another archive of the same mail is
[http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1007.2/02325.html](http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1007.2/02325.html)

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PercussusVII
Christ its almost impossible to read that page

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vog
Care to elaborate? I didn't have any issues reading that page. Moreover, I
don't have any clue what could make it hard to read for others.

~~~
CyberShadow
The link has been changed by a moderator. I don't know what the original link
was, though.

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tronje
It was this link:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20100814173517/http://lkml.org/lk...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100814173517/http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/7/22/249)

~~~
vog
Good to know. However, I still don't see what grand-grand-grand-parent was
complaining about.

