git clone changes file modification time

Question

When I clone a git repository using \"git clone ...\" command all cloned files in my local repository have the same modification time with date and time when

Answer 1

This linux one-liner will fix all the files (not folders - just files) - and it will also fix files with spaces in them too:-

git ls-files -z | xargs -0 -n1 -I{} -- git log -1 --format="%ai {}" {} | perl -ne 'chomp;next if(/'"'"'/);($d,$f)=(/(^\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d \d\d:\d\d:\d\d(?: \+\d\d\d\d|)) (.*)/);print "d=$d f=$f\n"; `touch -d "$d" '"'"'$f'"'"'`;' 

Answer 2

Git does not record timestamp for the files, since it is a Distributed VCS (meaning the time on your computer can be different from mine: there is no "central" notion of time and date)

The official argument for not recording that metadata is explained in this answer.

But you can find scripts which will attempt to restore a meaningful date, like this one (or a simpler version of the same idea).

Answer 3

You can retrieve the last modification date of all files in a git repository. (lat commit time) https://serverfault.com/q/401437/267639

Then use touch command change the modification date.

git ls-tree -r --name-only HEAD | while read filename; do 
  unixtime=$(git log -1 --format="%at" -- "${filename}")
  touchtime=$(date -d @$unixtime +'%Y%m%d%H%M.%S')
  touch -t ${touchtime} "${filename}"
done

Also my gist here.

Oct 2019 Update

Thanks to P. T. for your comment.
I've updated the answer and gist to support filenames with space.

Answer 4

Adding to the list of one-liners ...

for f in $(git ls-files) ; do touch -d $(git log -1 --format='%aI' "$f") "$f" ; done

Answer 5

Another option for resetting the mtime is git-restore-mtime.

sudo apt install git-restore-mtime # Debian/Ubuntu example
git clone <myurl>
cd <mydir>
git restore-mtime

Answer 6

A shorter variant of @Chris's answer that I find easier to understand:

git ls-files | xargs -I{} git log -1 --date=format:%Y%m%d%H%M.%S --format='touch -t %ad "{}"' "{}" | $SHELL