timetime

A CLI for repairing timestamp metadata of file copies 🕛🕧🕐🕜🕑🕝🕒

Basic Usage

When given two or more files, timetime will cross-check their created/modified timestamps and 💅 repair ✨ each file's timestamp metadata to match whichever values are the earliest:

timetime my-file.txt backups/my-file.txt

By default, 🚨the files must have identical checksums🚨, because it assumes that they are copies. If not, a warning will be produced and the operation will fail. This can be circumvented with the --force or -f option:

timetime --force file-1 file-2 file-3

⚠️Use with caution⚠️, as this will blindly overwrite any number of timestamps!

"Modified" vs "Created"

By default, timetime will compare both mtime ("modified at") and, on supported systems, btime ("created at").

To compare only the "modified" timestamp, use the --mtime or -m flag:

timetime --mtime file-1 file-2

Note that some filesystems will prevent a file's "created at" from being after its "modified at" by automatically setting btime to match mtime.

Comparison strategy

When supplied with multiple files, timetime can be configured to use the newest timestamps, rather than the oldest:

timetime --strategy newest file-1 file-2

This can be useful in situations where a set of files are known to be in the wrong timezone, or to have had their timestamp metadata damaged in some other way.

Timezone safety

As a special feature, timetime will detect if the files' timestamps are off by an exact number of hours. If this is the case, it will output a warning:

Warning: files may have matching timestamps from different timezones

Due to the risk of false positives, this warning will not halt execution, unless an extra --tz-safety parameter is supplied:

timetime file-1 file-2 --tz-safety

Usage with rmlint

The timetime command is intended to be used as part of a more complex file consolidation and/or deletion script, such as one produced by rmlint.

For example, prior to removing a duplicate file, it may make sense to "correct" the timestamps of the files, to preserve the oldest modified/created timestamps. This can be done by supplying a custom removal command to rmlint:

rmlint -o sh -c sh:cmd='timetime --tz-safety "$1" "$2" && rm "$1"' --keep-all-tagged --must-match-tagged -T df /media/backup // /media/original

The above command will detect files in /media/backup that are identical to files in /media/original, then "repair" timestamps across both the backup and the original, and then (only if that succeeds) remove the duplicate file.

As always, be sure to test operations carefully before removing files en masse!

Installing

via Cargo

Set up Rust/Cargo and install from crates.io by running:

cargo install timetime

Thanks To:

• The maintainers of rmlint for such a reliable and well-documented project
• Carol Nichols and Steve Klabnik for the official book

Contributing

• Check the issue tracker and consider creating a new issue.
• Fork the project and create a new branch for your contribution.
• Write, commit, and push your contribution to your branch.
• Make sure the project builds (cargo build) and functionality still works as expected.
• Submit a pull request.

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)

at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.