GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 409374
GEdit misinforms the user a file has been modified when it has not
Last modified: 2014-02-22 10:54:03 UTC
Please describe the problem: When saving a file, if the access time on the file changes and the uses tries to save, the user is informed the file has been modified since being read. The file doesn't have to actually be modified for this, only accessed, which is is misleading and incorrect to tell the user it has been modified. Steps to reproduce: 1. Open a file with gedit 2. Access the file (command-line: touch file) 3. Save the file with gedit Actual results: Prompted to save even though the file has been modified since being read. Expected results: No prompt since the file was not actually modified. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: None.
touch file is not "acessing a file" is _modifying_ a file: it changes the mtime (modification time) attribute of the file, not the atime (access time attribute). This is exactly what touch and the mtime attribute are there for.
Okay, that was a bad example, here's what I did to reproduce it. Opened a file (Game.pm) stat the file Executed a perl script that included the module (Game.pm) stat the file save the file with gedit Here's the stat on the command-line: s1n@citadel $ stat Morris/Game.pm File: `Morris/Game.pm' Size: 1462 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: 11h/17d Inode: 2246 Links: 1 Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 1000/ s1n) Gid: ( 100/ users) Access: 2007-02-19 17:59:06.000000000 -0600 Modify: 2007-02-19 17:59:06.000000000 -0600 Change: 2007-02-19 23:53:39.000000000 -0600 s1n@citadel $ time ./MiniMaxOpening.pl -v -i board1.txt Calculating static estimation B, W: xxBBxxWxxWxxWxxxBxxxx Static Estimation Value: -2 Neighbors of 17: 1016 real 0m0.014s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.004s s1n@citadel $ stat Morris/Game.pm File: `Morris/Game.pm' Size: 1462 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: 11h/17d Inode: 2246 Links: 1 Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 1000/ s1n) Gid: ( 100/ users) Access: 2007-02-19 17:59:06.000000000 -0600 Modify: 2007-02-19 17:59:06.000000000 -0600 Change: 2007-02-19 23:53:46.000000000 -0600 s1n@citadel $ stat Morris/Game.pm File: `Morris/Game.pm' Size: 1462 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: 11h/17d Inode: 2246 Links: 1 Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 1000/ s1n) Gid: ( 100/ users) Access: 2007-02-19 17:59:06.000000000 -0600 Modify: 2007-02-19 17:59:06.000000000 -0600 Change: 2007-02-19 23:53:55.000000000 -0600 Note that before the last stat call, I attempted to save the file in gedit. Note that the file was not changed and the Modification time did not change but off the top of my head I cannot remember the difference between change and modification times. Either way, the file was not modified in any way, as per the modification time. This is an extremely annoying behavior and if gedit is not responsible, then I will file a bug for the appropriate application.
I can not reproduce the bug with gedit 2.26.3. Granted, with touch the msg occurs. But I also experience that the message pops up when I did not edit the file with another program, but just read it (e.g. with make). I don't have a reliable procedure to reproduce, I'll post one when I have. I'm on fat32,noatime. Maybe comparing the disk version with the display version (e.g. file length + hash) would avoid such false positives.
I am closing this, we did not have any similar complains in years. Sure, the mtime is an heuristic and can fail, but it exists more or less for this specific reason to have a quick way to check without reading and comparing the content which can be very expensive