* coreutils.texi (cp invocation): Mention that --preserve=timestamps

doesn't preserve time stamps on symbolic links.
Reported by Polo Talnir in <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/230866>.

diff --git a/doc/ChangeLog b/doc/ChangeLog
index f296614f06d9fcf4b57bb1578a9436a14c966a5c..bdae8a22521f064ed9d91b5acc43ef5761299028 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/ChangeLog
+++ b/doc/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+2007-03-12  Jim Meyering  <jim@meyering.net>
+
+       * coreutils.texi (cp invocation): Mention that --preserve=timestamps
+       doesn't preserve time stamps on symbolic links.
+       Reported by Polo Talnir in <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/230866>.
+
 2007-02-27  Paul Eggert  <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
 
        * coreutils.texi (df invocation): With -P, the default block size

diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 23451fe73787f5e93c0adeb309a4fdb68e250cf7..6839524512ae9bb9e6040053359f233c58b0be84 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -7030,7 +7030,13 @@ and ordinary users
 may preserve the group ownership of a file only if they happen to be
 a member of the desired group.
 @itemx timestamps
-Preserve the times of last access and last modification.
+Preserve the times of last access and last modification, when possible.
+In general, it is not possible to preserve these attributes
+when the affected file is a symbolic link.
+However, FreeBSD now provides the @code{lutimes} function, which makes
+it possibile even for symbolic links.  However, this implementation does
+not yet take advantage of that.
+@c FIXME: once we provide lutimes support, update the above.
 @itemx links
 Preserve in the destination files
 any links between corresponding source files.