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Cc: Jeff King , Omri Sarig , git@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Understanding why Git defaults to show author date and not committer date Message-ID: References: <20260711080331.GB1470749@coredump.intra.peff.net> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Provags-ID: V03:K1:dBryBNXK0K2uXqFb+O4N+0yf9DwrLLDXuAMrNvlkp3Sw8UD4xid A5acXT32tV7FFTT5S/JVOXAOpFR29I+Go1VQyqRG/MIkFpnFADp79pScjuxzmgzkJPpRc/z JcsO7xO52cbg7cL5GCyg3gSwy28vIXR6714HPjnhjb6mEK5Wr8zGOxoVFZZw4gj7xcWAPt+ F4mjWapXlXJfbAN+PBR1w== X-Spam-Flag: NO UI-OutboundReport: notjunk:1;M01:P0:Q0+JAJwhloA=;V6dBTah7UknbUKeLlXhGNMugx1L fK1EwmkhnOtIhzltfVXSUnRi3l3c5BovGmbXaIqwLhFlMYo+eKpQ0efBIu5RV9bMQ0RR5ix4F P9lp7n1eklYiBcYBNFABIt2mjNeJ9XSltW2+qNbDSX2LvMN2jrmBZt+Z0xwGnwMkY7thE1HuZ QQPHpjUaQt4iVz/dUovEAKHnkSdpwXbtZOHCe2ilQx8EU/mZaej87Jn465b3g6Zvlz4ZYuLCK 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mailing patches, the committer date is usually >> much less interesting. It is "when the maintainer happened to pick up >> your patch", as opposed to when you wrote it. > >True. In mailing list workflow, the author date recorded is usually >the date that the patch was sent to the mailing list, which may be >later than when you wrote it, but is much more relevant as that is >closer to the time when anybody other than the author have seen the >patch for the first time. > but why do you consider this more interesting than when the commit=20 actually hit the target branch? why would most people exploring branch=20 histories care more for the "meta" surrounding submissions rather than=20 when they actually started to matter to users? >> Likewise, we show the author's name by default, not the committer's. > which should be kept, because the committer identity is much less=20 interesting in most workflows. showing author name + committer date by default may seem unclean, but=20 it's what is most *useful*. if the change was to be made, it would have to be visualized to avoid=20 confusion. i kinda like s/Date:/Stamp:/ because it's short and the=20 metaphor kinda makes sense. "Committed:" seems worse. format=3Dfuller's=20 "CommitDate" seems even worse in this context. the new default should get a new somewhat arbitrary name like "compact". note that i'm not worried about backwards compatibility, as somebody=20 parsing the porcelain output without even specifying a format doesn't=20 deserve differently.