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

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Sep 6, 2008, 19:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20080906192727.GC18631@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <200809061705.56879.robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com>

Robin Rosenberg <robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> 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.