Inodes are either uselessor dangerous in cygwin (hash of an
absolute pathname on FAT). They may not even change after rm+touch.
Yes, I just looked it up and found that out. I was hoping they used
first block number like many Linux FSes have tried, in which case it
would have worked, but if it's a hash of the path name, it's
guaranteed not to change.
And Linus' point is excellent, too: this feature is also useful
for automated systems (like git-applypatch) that can be assumed to
never forget to warn git ahead of time.