RE: Modif timestamps of files in CVS repository

[Jim.Hyslop]

Laurent CHARLES wrote:
> We want to rewrite the revision time information within the 
> *,v files, but 
> not to change the date, only to change the way the date is 
> displayed. This 
> is because the old date format with 2 digits for the year 
> crashes viewCVS, 
> while it is ok if the year is written with 4 digits.
Ah, gotcha. I'm wondering if it might be easier to modify viewCVS to handle
2 digit dates safely.

> I wondered if CVS uses this information (file timestamp), or 
> if it only 
> relies on the date information present within the files.
I doubt that CVS uses the timestamp - there are operations that can change
the timestamp of the file, without disturbing any revision information:
adding/moving/removing tags, many of the 'cvs admin' commands, and so on. I
would suspect you're probably safe (of course, apply the usual caveats about
backups, being very careful, etc.).

Have a look in the contrib directory - who knows, there may be a script
already written to perform this conversion for you. This was probably a big
issue for the Y2K panic (wow - that was over five years ago already!).

-- 
Jim Hyslop
Senior Software Designer
Leitch Technology International Inc. ( http://www.leitch.com )
Columnist, C/C++ Users Journal ( http://www.cuj.com/experts )