Re: [JGIT PATCH] Expose the raw timezone offset from PersonIdent

["Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org>]

Robin Rosenberg <robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> wrote:
> fredagen den 5 september 2008 03.37.19 skrev Shawn O. Pearce:
> > Applications may wish to have this value, much as they
> > can get the raw seconds-since-epoch and reformat it
> > for their own uses.
> 
> Necessary (performance) or just nice? We already provide the
> timezone in java.util format.

It isn't necessary from a performance perspective, but is required
to read the commit data exactly, but in parsed form.

What I'm doing at the application level is taking a RevCommit and
converting it into a different data structure (more specifically
a Google Protocol Buffer) that has all of the parts broken out.
It looks like this:

  message GitPerson {
    required string name = 1;
    required string email = 2;
    required int32 when = 3;
    required int32 tz = 4;
  }
  
  message GitCommit {
    required string id = 1;
    repeated string parent_id = 2;
    required GitPerson author = 3;
    optional GitPerson committer = 4;
    optional string message = 5;
  }

I'm later processing the GitPerson in Python and need to use the tz
to offset when to format a time for display.  If the author has a
"funny" offset in their commit our existing getTimeZone() method
can return null, which means I have to then lie and send 0 to the
Python code.  I'd rather send the exact offset.

-- 
Shawn.