[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2015-10-12T17:17:12Z"
 content="""
I want to think a little bit about why the location log is updated in this
case before thinking about adding an option. It might make sense to just
not update the location log when it already says the file is present and
only the timestamp is being changed.

I can think of 2 reasons not to do it:

1. If it has to query the current state of the log, that might slow down
   `git annex add` in the common case, just for this less common case.

   But, updating the log necessarily involves reading it in and outputting
   an updated one, so that could probably be finessed.

   (Or, git annex add makes a separate pass to add unlocked files anyway,
   so it could only do the query in that case.)

2. There might be good reasons to want to update the timestamp in the log,
   since it's just verified that the content is still present. Maybe.

   But then, fsck doesn't update the timestamps when it does the same kind
   of verification. And, the only thing that updates a given repo's entry
   in the log is that repo, or another repo that is sending or dropping
   content from that repo. 
   
   There don't seem to be any reasons of
   distributed consistency to need to worry about updating the timestamp
   just to reflect current facts.
"""]]