Git clone changes file modification time

Question

When I clone a Git repository using the "git clone ..." command, all cloned files in my local repository have the same modification time with date and time as when the git clone command was issued.

Is there a way to clone a remote Git repository with the actual modification time for each file?

Answer 1

Git does not record timestamp for the files, since it is a Distributed VCS (meaning the time on your computer can be different from mine: there is no "central" notion of time and date)

The official argument for not recording that metadata is explained in this answer.

But you can find scripts which will attempt to restore a meaningful date, like this one (or a simpler version of the same idea).

Answer 2

You can retrieve the last modification date of all files in a Git repository (last commit time). See How to retrieve the last modification date of all files in a Git repository.

Then use the touch command change the modification date:

git ls-tree -r --name-only HEAD | while read filename; do   unixtime=$(git log -1 --format="%at" -- "${filename}")   touchtime=$(date -d @$unixtime +'%Y%m%d%H%M.%S')   touch -t ${touchtime} "${filename}" done 

Also see my gist here.