Timestamp preservation and handling in Harvest

Products

• CA Harvest Software Change Manager
• CA Harvest Software Change Manager - OpenMake Meister

Issue/Introduction

Here are some questions related to the timestamp of the files inside Harvest.

• When setting up a new project in Harvest, can Harvest preserve the timestamp of the files from the old project instead of using the current timestamp? For example, when setting up ProjectB based on ProjectA, can the creation time of the file in ProjectB have the modified time of ProjectA instead of the current timestamp when ProjectB is being created? This gives us a better idea of the file history than the other version control systems (SVN, GIT) can give us.
• The related question is when doing Add Workarea|Add to Workspace|Check out (for Browse), is there a way to preserve the timestamp of the files (i.e., use the last modified time kept by Harvest) instead of the current timestamp? I checked the manual but could not find the option.

The repository currently shows the Last Updated field on every screen. The value of this Last Updated field is derived from the last modified time of the file on disk.

Environment

Release : 14.0 and up

Cause

Each version of a file has an updated date equivalent to the time the file was checked out (for "R" tag files) or the time it was checked in (for "N" tag files).  When you check out a file, a new version is created, and it's a placeholder only.  It doesn't have content behind it until the new version of the file is checked in.  The timestamp you're expecting to see is likely the check-in time of the previous version.

Resolution

During the creation of Project B from Project A the timestamp that shows when the version was checked in is in the "File Modified On" column.  You can find this column by looking in the Lists tab and scrolling all the way to the right.  It will show the timestamp of the file that was checked in.  This works whether you have selected a folder in the data view or the "Versions" node under a package.  

This column is not available in the "Find Versions" tool, but the Lists tab does provide this information.