os.utime() that works on symlinks?

[landley]

BPO	623782
Nosy	@loewis, @jackjansen

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2002-11-04.10:17:18.000>
created_at = <Date 2002-10-15.21:47:43.000>
labels = ['type-feature']
title = 'os.utime() that works on symlinks?'
updated_at = <Date 2002-11-04.10:17:18.000>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/landley'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2002-11-04.10:17:18.000>
actor = 'loewis'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['None']
creation = <Date 2002-10-15.21:47:43.000>
creator = 'landley'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 623782
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['53664', '53665', '53666']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['loewis', 'jackjansen', 'landley']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'rejected'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue623782'
versions = []

[landley]

I can query a symlink's timestamps with os.lstat(), but can't
set them. Any attempt to set the timestamps on a symlink is
transparently redirected to the file it points to (which in this
case is on a read-only partition, as is not what I want to do
anyway).

Maybe os.lutime()?

[jackjansen]

Logged In: YES
user_id=45365

Is there a way to do this from a C program? os.utime() is simply a wrapper around the C library call of the same name, and I'm not aware of a lutime() on systems I'm familiar with...

[loewis]

Logged In: YES
user_id=21627

It's not possible to implement this feature: the operating
system provides no mechanism to modify the timestamp of a
symlink. The closest you can get is to remove and recreate
the symlink, but that uses the current time, not the one you
would give to utime.

[PuppyPi]

man 3 lutimes

int lutimes(const char *filename, const struct timeval tv[2]);

(Perhaps it wasn't present in 2002, but it is now!)