Suppose your branch has *one* commit that modified file `myfile`. When you interactively-rebase to that commit, mtime of that file will change even if though you did not change the file (i.e. commit you are on has changed the file, but since you're *at* this commit, not before this, there shouldn't have been any change to the file). This might be bad for performance; however what concerns me personally the most is that my editor keeps asking me "file was changed on the disk, are you sure you wanna modify the file?", which is confusing and annoying. I am also not completely sure, but it might be a regression, because I don't seem to remember having that before. # Steps to reproduce λ mkdir foo λ cd foo λ git init hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call: hint: hint: git config --global init.defaultBranch <name> hint: hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command: hint: hint: git branch -m <name> Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/foo/.git/ λ echo hello1 > file1 && git add file1 && git commit -m "1st commit" [master (root-commit) f1cc312] 1st commit 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 100644 file1 λ echo hello2 > file2 && git add file2 && git commit -m "2nd commit" [master 8bed9e1] 2nd commit 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 100644 file2 λ echo hello3 > file3 && git add file3 && git commit -m "3rd commit" [master e6d5aab] 3rd commit 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 100644 file3 λ stat -c %y file2 2021-08-25 12:37:19.008378563 +0300 λ rebase-at e HEAD~2 # that is `git rebase -i HEAD~2`, then [e]dit the commit Stopped at 8bed9e1... 2nd commit You can amend the commit now, with git commit --amend Once you are satisfied with your changes, run git rebase --continue λ stat -c %y file2 2021-08-25 12:37:37.375537063 +0300 ## Expected The mtime of the file did not change ## Actual The mtime of the file changed by 18 seconds # Additional information [System Info] git version: git version 2.33.0 cpu: x86_64 no commit associated with this build sizeof-long: 8 sizeof-size_t: 8 shell-path: /bin/sh uname: Linux 5.13.5-zen1-1-zen #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT Sun, 25 Jul 2021 18:03:00 +0000 x86_64 compiler info: gnuc: 11.1 libc info: glibc: 2.33 $SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /usr/bin/zsh
