From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andreas Ericsson Subject: Re: git and time Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:29:45 +0200 Message-ID: <451A8AD9.2010107@op5.se> References: <20060927140918.65775.qmail@web51004.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org, Jeff King , Jakub Narebski X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Wed Sep 27 16:30:17 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GSaQ5-0008TO-R2 for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:29:54 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932326AbWI0O3s (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:29:48 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932328AbWI0O3s (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:29:48 -0400 Received: from linux-server1.op5.se ([193.201.96.2]:11452 "EHLO smtp-gw1.op5.se") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932326AbWI0O3s (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:29:48 -0400 Received: by smtp-gw1.op5.se (Postfix, from userid 588) id DC8BF6BD4F; Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:29:46 +0200 (CEST) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.4 (2006-07-25) on linux-server1.op5.se X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.1.4 Received: from [192.168.1.20] (unknown [213.88.215.14]) by smtp-gw1.op5.se (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9815E6BCDC; Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:29:45 +0200 (CEST) User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (X11/20060913) To: Matthew L Foster In-Reply-To: <20060927140918.65775.qmail@web51004.mail.yahoo.com> Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Matthew L Foster wrote: > How can git be > said to keep an accurate record of history if time is uncertain? > Because git doesn't care about timestamps. It stores them as comments (albeit auto-formatted comments) and relies on the dependency chain to provide history. In the same way that contributors are expected to write clear and concise commit-messages, they are also expected to keep their system clocks somewhat in sync. Sometimes one or the other fails, and this is as inevitable as it can be annoying (although commit-messages along the line of "fixed some bugs causing some random crashes" for a commit that touches 2384 lines are indefinitely worse than a bad timestamp). What's beautiful about git is that it's designed to present a correct history even if random-contributor-X's system clock is out of sync with the rest of the world, as it inevitably will be at one point or another. It handles content, and the order in which each piece of content was added/removed/mutilated/transformed into something else, and it does a good job at that. All that aside though, would you rather have that fix pronto with a bad timestamp, or three days later when the contributor had time to set up ntp properly? -- Andreas Ericsson andreas.ericsson@op5.se OP5 AB www.op5.se Tel: +46 8-230225 Fax: +46 8-230231