From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Woodhouse Subject: Date handling. Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:16:32 +0100 Message-ID: <1113466592.12012.192.camel@baythorne.infradead.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Thu Apr 14 10:13:52 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([12.107.209.244]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DLzTQ-0003rU-Df for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:13:16 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261455AbVDNIQg (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Apr 2005 04:16:36 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261459AbVDNIQg (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Apr 2005 04:16:36 -0400 Received: from baythorne.infradead.org ([81.187.226.107]:1935 "EHLO baythorne.infradead.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261455AbVDNIQe (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Apr 2005 04:16:34 -0400 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=localhost.localdomain) by baythorne.infradead.org with esmtpsa (Exim 4.43 #1 (Red Hat Linux)) id 1DLzWb-0007yE-OZ for git@vger.kernel.org; Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:16:33 +0100 To: git@vger.kernel.org X-Mailer: Evolution 2.0.4 (2.0.4-1.dwmw2.1) X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by baythorne.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org The date handling is somewhat unreliable. We render dates into textual representation using the committer's locale (day names, etc), then later attempt to interpret that in some other locale. And we were just using localtime without even specifying the timezone so the timestamp was fairly randomised anyway. In fact, an $AUTHOR_DATE environment variable was making its way into the database entirely unchecked. I see two possible solutions: 1. Just store seconds-since-GMT-epoch and if we really want, the timezone as auxiliary information. 2. Store dates in RFC2822 form. Unless someone convincingly expresses a preference before I get to work and start playing with it, I'll implement the latter. -- dwmw2