Re: git annotate with date option not working?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 1, 2011, 16:16 UTC
Message-ID: <20110601161638.GB7132@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <4DE5F655.9020400@gmail.com>

On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 10:20:37AM +0200, Chengwei Ding wrote:

> can anyone confirm that this "--date" option is working for git
> annotate cmd.

This is by design:

  $ git show 31653c1abc1ac80206db9efca56ff1969150d8fe
  Author: Eugene Letuchy <eugene@facebook.com>
  Date:   Fri Feb 20 14:51:11 2009 -0800
  [...]
      git annotate ignores the date format specifiers and continues to
      uses the ISO format, as before.
  [...]
  +       if (cmd_is_annotate) {
                  output_option |= OUTPUT_ANNOTATE_COMPAT;
  +               blame_date_mode = DATE_ISO8601;
  +       } else {
  +               blame_date_mode = revs.date_mode;
  +       }

The annotate command is a historical artifact, and will remain frozen in time in terms of output format and features. If you want to use newer features, use "git blame". If you really need the annotate output format with newer blame features, use "git blame -c".

-Peff