Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] writes:
Note that you can *not* do the same thing with O_NOATIME, since the
whole point of O_NOATIME is that it changes the behavior of the open
itself (unlike O_CLOEXEC which changes _later_ behavior, and can
always be replaced by FD_CLOEXEC fnclt modulo races that are
immaterial for git)
A tangent.
I also thought O_NOATIME shouldn't be an effective fcntl(2) thing,
for the reasons you stated above, when I was studying the area
because of the discussion on these patches. I was surprised to see
that http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/fcntl.2.html contradicts
by saying F_SETFL can take O_NOATIME.
Perhaps it deserves a bugreport?