Re: [PATCH 4/5] date: document and test "raw-local" mode

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jul 12, 2016, 00:16 UTC
Message-ID: <20160712001626.GC26163@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20160711165000.GD3890@thunk.org>

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 12:50:00PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 01:06:17AM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> > 
> > The documentation claims that "raw-local" does not work. It
> > does, but the end result is rather subtle. Let's describe it
> > in better detail, and test to make sure it works (namely,
> > the epoch time doesn't change, but the zone does).
> 
> Maybe add an editorial statement that in most cases this isn't
> particularly useful?  Documenting raw-local implies that someone might
> want to consider using it, and it's not clear to me folks should ever
> try --- they're more likely to confuse themselves more than anything
> else.

I waffled on making such a statement. I agree it's unlikely to be that useful in practice. The most plausible scenario I could come up with is a program or script that asks for "--date=raw" because it's going to format the date later. Somebody using that program may prefer their local timestamps. Normally you'd just say "--date=iso-local" or whatever format you prefer, but because this is transiting through the other program which only understands --date=raw, you have to keep using that format.

I hoped that the explanation I added would prevent confusion, or at least be an improvement over the existing documentation of "doesn't work".

-Peff