Warning: modified in the future

Question

I am getting the warning

Warning: sendmailpm.jsp modified in the future. 

What does this mean?

Answer 1

If your code is residing on a FAT/FAT32 partition or ZIP file, this can be caused by the lack of precision in the FAT/ZIP filesystem's timestamping, which is 2 seconds (afaik). This can cause compiler / build tool output to be saved with a time slightly in the future, so that when the next build/deployment step (can be internal to a JSP container) is executed, the file will appear to be from the future and the warning is produced. Try using a different file system, e.g. NTFS on DOS/Windows boxes.

I had the same warning message from Apache Ant when trying to do a Java build on a FAT32 TrueCrypt partition. After ruling out other causes (timezone difference, clock off etc), I eventually found a hint on this, changed to an NTFS TrueCrypt partition and the warning disappeared.