Re: Should update-index --refresh force writing the index in case of racy timestamps?

"brian m. carlson" [off-list ref] writes:

On 2021-12-17 at 10:44:32, Marc Strapetz wrote:

quoted

For one of my Git-LFS test repositories, switching between branches quite
often results in lots of racy index timestamps. Subsequent calls to "git
update-index --refresh" or "git status" will invoke the "lfs" filter over
and over again, just to figure out that all entries are still up-to-date.
Hence, the index will never be rewritten and racy timestamps will remain.

To break out of this state, it seems favorable to write the index if any
racy timestamp is detected. We will be able to provide a patch if this
change sounds reasonable.

Sure, this sounds reasonable, especially if, as you mentioned, git
status already does this.  We might as well make the plumbing commands
as functional as the porcelain commands.

Given that "update-index --refresh" is a way to say "we know
something changed to make cached stat information dirty even for
otherwise clean paths and we want our 'diff-files' and other
plumbing command to start relying on the cached stat information
again, so please do as much I/O as you need", I agree that it should
do as thourough job as necessary.