Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!rice!sun-spots-request
From: paulb@ncc1701.tti.com (Paul Blumstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Touch bug
Keywords: SunOS
Message-ID: <4159@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 7 Apr 89 14:50:00 GMT
References: <8903061938.AA00131@ncc1701.TTI.COM>
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Organization: Chaos
Lines: 27
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
Original-Date: 30 Mar 89 16:50:27 GMT
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 229, message 10 of 15
X-Issue-Reference: v7n211

paulb@ttidca.tti.com (Paul Blumstein) writes:
+Our network has some machines on 3.5 and some on 4.0.  If you have a zero
+length file existing on a 4.0 machine and are trying to touch that file
+over NFS (rw permissions, of course) from a 3.5 machine, touch does not
+complain but does not modify the date.  This has caused makefile problems
+that rely on touch to update dates.

I received this reply from SUN and am posting it because others may have
the same problem:

From: cs@sun.com (Carl Smith)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View

Fixed some time ago.  If you have suppport, a fix is available.
Meanwhile, if you're just creating some empty files and updating them to
keep track of which targets need to be made, try make TOUCH='date >',
assuming of course that the people who wrote your makefiles were smart
enough to write

	${TOUCH} mumble

rather than

	touch mumble


			Carl