comment #2:

> That already exists (https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/tree/lib/stat-time.h#n156) and we're using it, as detailed in the first comment on this bug.  But there are limitations in NetBSD's implementation which can give rise to incorrect results.   See the link above for details.

Apologies, I probably explained it poorly. I'm aware of the stat-time module and the BSD bug.

I was proposing an extended stat function in Gnulib that accepts an extra 'struct timespec *' argument.

That way any OS-specific details could be contained there, i.e. populating 'struct stat' from 'struct statx' on Linux.

The extra argument would contain the file creation time if supported by the OS/file-system. Or else it's values will be set to -1 like get_stat_birthtime().

Perhaps it makes sense to add a function in Gnulib that allows fetching the creation-time of a file?

On the BSDs you can use struct stat to get the birthtime [1].

Linux has statx as you mentioned [2].

Windows (not sure if Findutils supports it) through GetFileTime [3].

From what I can tell AIX and Solaris don't have any way to get it.

Maybe a wrapper function around stat with an extra argument?

extern int stat_birthtime (const char *file, struct stat *st, struct timespec *birthtime);

[2] https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=stat&sektion=2
[2] https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/statx.2.html
[3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/nf-fileapi-getfiletime