gh-84649: Make TimedRotatingFileHandler use CTIME instead of MTIME by martonivan · Pull Request #24660 · python/cpython

The TimedRotatingFileHandler previously only used st_mtime attribute of the
log file to detect whether it has to be rotate yet or not. In cases when the
file is changed within the rotatation period the st_mtime is also updated
to the current time and the rotation never happens.

It's more appropriate to check the file creation time (st_ctime) instead.
Whenever available, the more appropriate st_birthtime will be in use. (This
feature is available on FreeBSD, MacOS and Windows at the moment.) If
the st_mtime would be newer than st_ctime (e.g.: because the inode
related to the file has been changed without any file content
modification), then the earliest attribute will be used.