[Unison-hackers] On making times=true the default

[Dan Christensen]

On Jan 20, 2025, Tõivo Leedjärv <toivol at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 19 Jan 2025 at 14:56, Dan Christensen <jdc at uwo.ca> wrote:
>>
>> On Jan 16, 2025, Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:
>>
>> > So, I would be in favor of times=yes having automatic/silent conflict
>> > resolution where the newer timestamp is set to the older one, as fixing
>> > up past errors.
>>
>> I think it would be a mistake to auto-update times to the older one.  If
>
> I don't know if that's what Greg meant, but my reading of his idea,
> and my reply, was that this is just automatic conflict resolution, not
> automatic propagation (which I would not support).

Greg used the word "silent" above, and that's what I'm objecting to.
I don't object as strongly if the propagation is not automatic,
although I'm still not sure why choosing the older time would be
the best choice.  Time stamps are often used to indicate changes,
and to me the most recent time would make the most sense.

Thanks for also pointing out that my example involving make wouldn't
involve a conflict, and so the above wouldn't apply.  But I still
think there are situations in which it would and that we should make
it safe to run unison without worrying about information loss.

Dan