Folder comparison changes last modified date

Posts: 1 · fade76 28 Dec 2021, 13:17

Hello,

I just started using FFS so I'm not sure if this is a silly thing to ask. :)

I noticed that when I use FFS to compare 2 folders the last modified time changes on both folders.

Is there an option in FFS to stop this?

I'm only comparing folders, not copying anything.

Posts: 1202 · therube 29 Dec 2021, 18:08

Is there an option in FFS to stop this?

Unfortunately, not.

Work-around, Preserving dates on copied subdirectories.

Posts: 2 · SteveD225 2 May 2022, 03:11

It's not a silly question and I'm wondering about it when I do a mirror. The other related posts seem to be concerned with preserving the modification date of the source and target folders. In my case, the modification date of the target folders doesn't matter much, but I do find it odd that the modification date of the source folders changes. Does anyone know why that is? What is changing, certainly not the contents? I'm on a Mac and also wondering how updating the source folder's modification dates to the time of mirror will might affect my time-machine backups. Thanks!

Posts: 7506 · Zenju 2 May 2022, 07:36

The ffs_lock file is temporarily written into the base directories of both source and target.

Posts: 2 · SteveD225 2 May 2022, 20:33

Thank you - and it's a good thing that FFS is designed to handle concurrency! I also see now how I can disable it with Expert Settings, but I probably wouldn't want to do that. I'm sure writing temporary files here and there happens all the time with various apps, so I don't anticipate any impact with time-machine.