ctime: creation or change time?

[eric@melski.net]

I recently upgraded my Cygwin install to 1.5.13-1 from 1.5.12-1 and noticed that
cygwin is now setting the "ctime" for files after write operations.  I scanned
the list archives and saw the discussion of this change, but I saw no mention
of the fact that on Windows/NTFS, "ctime" is actually file creation time, not
file change time as it is on Unix.  I understand the motivation for wanting to
make Cygwin behave like POSIX, but in this instance it seems like that
compatibility has come at the cost of compatibility with Windows:  other
Windows applications will be "surprised" by the sudden change of the file
creation time when the file has not in fact been recreated.

In fact, NTFS has no notion of file change time as described in POSIX.  Is there
any chance of undoing this change?  An alternative solution might be to simply
use the NTFS file modify time for both the mtime and ctime of the file, since
those two are almost always updated together anyway.

Thanks,

Eric Melski


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