Re: [PATCH 2/2] --date=relative falls back to "short" format for commits older than a year

From

Jeff King <peff@peff.net>

Date

Feb 22, 2009, 23:06 UTC

Message-ID

<20090222230620.GB19011@coredump.intra.peff.net>

In-Reply-To

<1235165034-20299-1-git-send-email-eletuchy@gmail.com>

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 01:23:54PM -0800, eletuchy@gmail.com wrote:

> From: Eugene Letuchy <eugene@facebook.com>
> 
> In the context of sizing the git blame time column, it doesn't make a
> lot of sense to see "12 months ago" next to an exact timestamp +
> timezone for something 13 months ago. This commit makes commits older
> than 12 months display the date only, not the time.

diff --git a/date.c b/date.c
index d75dff4..6dbb8e8 100644
--- a/date.c
+++ b/date.c
@@ -128,12 +128,14 @@ const char *show_date(unsigned long time, int tz, enum date_mode mode)
 			snprintf(timebuf, sizeof(timebuf), "%lu weeks ago", (diff + 3) / 7);
 			return timebuf;
 		}
-		/* Say months for the past 12 months or so */
-		if (diff < 360) {
+		/* Say months for the past 24 months or so */
+		if (diff < 720) {
 			snprintf(timebuf, sizeof(timebuf), "%lu months ago", (diff + 15) / 30);
 			return timebuf;
 		}
-		/* Else fall back on absolute format.. */
+		/* Otherwise, years. Centuries is probably overkill. */
+		snprintf(timebuf, sizeof(timebuf), "%lu years ago", (diff + 183) / 365);
+		return timebuf;
 	}
 
 	if (mode == DATE_LOCAL)


but maybe other people actually like seeing the absolute time. I've
always found it jarring when reading relative times (but part of that
_was_ because it was so long and exact).

-Peff