Re: orthogonal cases of log --date option

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 5, 2009, 10:43 UTC
Message-ID: <20090305104304.GA17760@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vtz6bdmfi.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 12:45:37AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > I can use "git log --date=iso" to get YYYY-MM-DD format for dates, or
> > "git log --date=local" to force the dates to use my local time zone, but
> > if I use _both_ of these options together, it uses only the last one,
> > and ignores any preceding --date (even those in this case, the two
> > --date options affect orthogonal properties of dates).  Is there a way
> > to get YYYY-MM-DD format dates, but in my local time-zone?
> 
> No, there isn't.
> 
> But this patch may help you get started.

FWIW, I think this is the wrong direction. You are working around the lack of orthogonality in the interface by tweaking things in the implementation. I think you are better to fix the interface, but support --date=local for historical reasons. IOW,

  git log --local-dates --date=short

with

  git log --date=local

as a historical synonym for

  git log --local-dates --date=default

This makes the interface simpler to understand: --date remains a selector, and --date=local is a special case that new people don't need to think about or understand.

-Peff