Re: file order in archives, dar, special tar/debs/udebs

[Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 03:15:04PM -0600, Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, Christian Fasshauer wrote:
> > Me too, but there is nothing great so see in generated deb files. After
> > compilation, there have most files the same time and those who not, are
> > listed in the source package again with the original time.

I disagree.  Binary packages contain more than just compiled files.
>From Policy 5.1:

     Maintainers should preserve the modification times of the upstream
     source files in a package, as far as is reasonably possible.[1]

[1]  The rationale is that there is some information conveyed by knowing
     the age of the file, for example, you could recognize that some
     documentation is very old by looking at the modification time, so it
     would be nice if the modification time of the upstream source would be
     preserved.

Richard Braakman