* Canonicalise timestamps in the Nix store to 1 (1970-01-01 00:00:01

UTC) rather than 0 (00:00:00).  1 is a better choice because some
  programs use 0 as a special value.  For instance, the Template
  Toolkit uses a timestamp of 0 to denote the non-existence of a file,
  so it barfs on files in the Nix store (see
  template-toolkit-nix-store.patch in Nixpkgs).  Similarly, Maya 2008
  fails to load script directories with a timestamp of 0 and can't be
  patched because it's closed source.

  This will also shut up those "implausibly old time stamp" GNU tar
  warnings.

src/libstore/local-store.cc

@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@ void canonicalisePathMetaData(const Path & path, bool recurse)
         if (st.st_mtime != 0) {
             struct utimbuf utimbuf;
             utimbuf.actime = st.st_atime;
-            utimbuf.modtime = 0;
+            utimbuf.modtime = 1; /* 1 second into the epoch */
             if (utime(path.c_str(), &utimbuf) == -1) 
                 throw SysError(format("changing modification time of `%1%'") % path);
         }