Re: Git should preserve modification times at least on request

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

Modification times are a subset of the total metadata you might care
about, so they are solving a much more general problem. Which may also
partially answer your question about why this isn't built into git. The
general problem gets much bigger when you start wanting to carry things
like modes (which git doesn't actually track; we really only care about
the executable bit) or extended attributes (acls, etc).

"modes" are interesting, especially when you think about group
permissions, as it would make you design how you store group and
owner, which in turn forces you to think how "peter" on one system
relates to "peter" on another system (answer: there generally isn't
any relationship) ;-)