1660841 - Allow querying file creation time in nsIFile

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: XPCOM, enhancement)

Description

[Keefer Rourke]

It would be very useful to be able to query file creation time from the nsIFile interface.

This could be made available by a new method like nsresult nsIFile::GetCreationTime(PRTime aCreatedAt&).

• On Windows, this information is provided via the GetFileTime syscall.

• On macOS, this information is provided by the st_birthtimespec field of the struct returned by stat (2).

• On Linux (including Android), while most file systems do store the creation time, it is not accessible from any standard syscall. On these platforms we could just return NS_NOT_AVAILABLE from the implementation.

Comment 1

[Tom S. (please needinfo tschuster)]

For Linux can't we use statx? Per https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statx.2.html the struct contains struct statx_timestamp stx_btime; /* Creation */. I think the main problem might be that there is no libc API for this.

Comment 2

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

(In reply to Tom Schuster [:evilpie] from comment #1)

For Linux can't we use statx? Per https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statx.2.html the struct contains struct statx_timestamp stx_btime; /* Creation */. I think the main problem might be that there is no libc API for this.

Rust to the rescue! https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/ffd59bf9c62125813abae8ca52f0ac3a67459e8f/library/std/src/sys/unix/fs.rs#L91

Comment 3

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

We don't support statx in our sandbox yet (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1673771). It also won't work on older kernels I guess. So be prepared to handle ENOSYS on Linux.

Comment 4

[Beth Rennie [:beth] (she/her)]

Attachment: Bug 1660841 - Provide file creation time via nsIFile::creationTime{,ofLink} r?nika

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/12448bfd676b
Provide file creation time via nsIFile::creationTime{,ofLink} r=nika

Comment 6

[Dorel Luca [:dluca]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/12448bfd676b