What time/date do you stamp your deployed data/exe files when they appear on the target system?

Question

It seems a good and clean thing to ensure that your deployed files appear on the target system with a consistent time/date. Many Applications seem to do this but other than for care of overwriting Users' existing data I guess it has no real significance. I'm having a purge on my installer packaging and I'd like to know if there any good reasons for specific date/time handling.

Answer 1

Windows Installer uses the timestamp information on files (in some situations) in addition to the REINSTALLMODE property to determine which files should be updated (e.g. "o" means only replace a file if the existing copy is older).

I believe the default behavior is to leave the files timestamped for their original creation (not their installation onto the user's machine). Unless you have a specific reason to do something different, I would follow the default behavior.