Amazefilemanager: Timestamps not kept when moving

[cousteaulecommandant]

I just used Amaze to move all my photos from internal storage to the SD card, and learned the hard way that Amaze does not keep timestamps when moving files.
Since my default gallery app isn't smart enough to use EXIF data to sort images, this means that one year of photos and videos got shuffled.
(Good thing I know Perl; I eventually managed to make a script that sets the timestamp of files based on their name, so at least I fixed the mess I made.)

Apparently when Amaze "moves" files, it just copies them (without preserving timestamps) and then deletes the original, so the solution might be as simple as setting the copy to preserve timestamps, at least when moving files.

[EmmanuelMess]

Timestamps in UNIX are not like in Windows, there's no creation date saved on the file (that is, on the inode).

   st_atime
         This is the file's last access timestamp.

  st_mtime
         This is the file's last modification timestamp.

  st_ctime
         This is the file's last status change timestamp.

Source: stat(2) man page.

[EmmanuelMess]

For a less technical explanation see here.

[cousteaulecommandant]

There is indeed no creation timestamp, but there is a modification timestamp, which is the important one—the one my gallery application relies on (as do most applications featuring a "sort by time" option) and the one Amaze didn't keep. (It can be set with the touch -mt command which is what I eventually did, or preserved when copying with cp -p which is what I think Amaze should do)

PS: with "most applications" I was thinking on desktop file browsers such as Nautilus, or command line applications like ls -t

[VishalNehra]

@cousteaulecommandant there's no way to preserve them when you move to a mountable storage such as SD Card. If, however, you move those files within internal storage then they will be preserved.
Edit : my bad, there are ways to preserve, but implementing them is outside the scope of a file manager.

[EmmanuelMess]

Here's the solution:

int targetfile = open(target_file_path, O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|(no_clobber ? O_EXCL : 0), 0600);
struct timespec times[] = { source_stat->st_atim, source_stat->st_mtim, };
futimens(targetfile, times);

Source: How difficult is it to preserve metadata when moving a file? by Richard Maw (extract).
This is not trivial, but can be implemented.
Related: #843.

[mirh]

Edit : my bad, there are ways to preserve, but implementing them is outside the scope of a file manager.

Why?
On a desktop it would be totally expected behavior.