I released the first version of my Rewrite analyzer plugin with a commit on 2010-05-12. The WordPress.org plugin directory however still displays 2010-11-27 as the “Last Updated” date – this is the date when the plugin directory was created in the repository.
The Developer FAQ states:
Last updated time
Time of last check in to the appropriate directory (trunk/ or the stable tag directory) after a version number change.
Most developers commit their first version right after their plugin directory gets created, so you won’t notice the difference. But I have seen the same discrepancy in other plugins that were committed more than one day after the directory was created.
I committed both the trunk/ and tags/1.0/ directories in one go (with a local copy and then a commit), but the other plugin with this problem did it like most people do: a commit of trunk/ and then a remote copy to tags/1.0/.
The only time the readme gets parsed and the entry gets rebuilt is when the version of the plugin changes. However, for people using tags, this generally happens after they make the new tag and update the Stable Tag.
The readme file got parsed, so I don’t know what else I could have done to make it update correctly?
I’ve been trying to work out the issue for months now, and have made several adjustments to try to solve the problem.
In short: Yes, we know there’s a problem. No, I don’t know how to fix it yet. You can stop reporting it already.
Current workaround: ANY commit of any kind should trigger it to update. So simply adding a space to the readme.txt and waiting 30 minutes should do the trick. If it doesn’t, then contact me: otto@wordpress.org
Based on the comment discussion in the question, I believe we have an answer to this.
Saving the readme.txt file with Unicode-8 (UTF-8) encoding seems to correct the ‘Last Updated’ problem.
For the record, it seems one should also always make a tag copy of the latest version too to ensure that both last updated date and version number get updated.