[ccache] CCACHE_HARDLINK and timestamps

[Martin Pool]

On 06/04/2006, at 1:09 PM, Richard Laager wrote:

> The man page says:
> "Using hard links is faster, but can confuse programs like ’make’ that
> rely on modification times."
>
> Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but wouldn't it be easy to  
> link()
> then do the equivalent of `touch` on the file? Would changing the
> timestamp on the file in the cache cause any problems?

The mtime is stored in the inode, which is shared between all links  
to the file.  If you did that then any other directories that  
contained the object file would also see its mtime change, possibly  
causing a rebuild over there.  Still, it does seem like it'd be  
better to touch the file.

-- 
Martin