On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 12:41:42PM -0700, Raul E Rangel wrote:
> When generating a tarball with `git archive <tree>`, `git archive` will
> use the current time as the mtime. This results in a non-hermetic
> tarball. Could we should add a --mtime option that allows passing in
> the time?
That seems like a very reasonable feature to have. Just to sketch out
the implementation, in case anybody wants to work on it:
- options are read first in cmd_archive(), but it passes unknown ones
on to write_archive(), which is where we parse the interesting ones.
- that relies on parse_archive_args() in archive.c. So we'd want a new
option in opts[] there, and to write the value into a new field in
the archiver_args struct.
- the time is filled in via parse_treeish_arg(), where we use
time(NULL) if there's no commit. And there we'd just use the value
from archiver_args.
If there is a commit and they've specified --mtime, what should
happen? Quietly ignore it? Override the commit's timestamp? Complain
and bail?
- I didn't look at how this might interact with "git archive
--remote". I think it might just all work, as we just ship the
options to the other side, which parses them itself using the same
code.
-Peff
