Unreliable file modification timestamps from source control

[dhollman]

We do VB6 builds using VBP.

They are setup using a VBG file to organize all the projects with interdependencies, and we rely on VBP to work out what needs to be rebuilt.

The problem I'm having is that since we use Mercurial (Git would be the same I think) the file timestamps are not a reliable way to check what needs to be rebuilt. Mercurial sets them to the last "get latest" time, nothing to do with changes to the files.

Are there any strategies to deal with this in VBP? It is possible to script an update to all files which looks in the repository history for their last change and updates their timestamps, but this is very slow to run.

Thanks

[kinook]

Many source control systems have an option to set the local file timestamp to the last modification or checkin time of the file into the repository when getting from the repository. Barring that, you may need to set them yourself or modify your build process to not rely on them (perhaps delete all output files before building).

[kinook]

This may be another possibility: http://stackoverflow.com/a/8160957/156738