Re: Millisecond precision in timestamps?

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 05:07:34PM -0800, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 1:12 AM, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> >> Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>:
> >>> Well... if we added a fractional seconds to a commit, older versions
> >>> of Git will scream loudly and refuse to work with the new commit. That
> >>> would create a fork of Git.
> >>
> >> So much for that idea, I guess.
> >>
> >> Unless..I don't know how git's database representations work.  Are they
> >> version-stamped in any way?  If so, some slightly painful hackery would
> >> get around that problem.
> >
> > % git cat-file -p HEAD
> >
> > You'll see exactly how git stores commits. Changing anything in there
> > must be done carefully.
> 
> Apparently there is no room to change in these fields without breaking
> compatibility with all current versions of Git. So its not just done
> carefully... its deciding to make Git 2.0 that is not compatible with
> any Git 1.x release.

There is room for new headers, and older versions of git will ignore
them. You could add a new "committer-timestamp" field that elaborates on
the timestamp included on the committer line. Newer versions of git
would respect it, and older versions would fall back to using the
committer timestamp.

But I really wonder if anybody actually cares about adding sub-second
timestamp support, or if it is merely "because SVN has it".

-Peff