Re: Git should preserve modification times at least on request
- From
- 'Peter Backes' <rtc@helen.plasma.xg8.de>
- Date
- Feb 22, 2018, 02:05 UTC
- Message-ID
- <20180222020535.GA11063@helen.PLASMA.Xg8.DE>
- In-Reply-To
- <007d01d3ab6f$e5439f10$afcadd30$@nexbridge.com>
On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 06:58:34PM -0500, Randall S. Becker wrote:
> May I suggest storing the date/time in UTC+0 in all cases. I can see > potential issues a couple of times a year where holes exist. I cannot even > fathom what would happen on a merge or edit of history.
I consider storing the timestamp simply in the traditional seconds-since-epoch UNIX timestamp format. But I'm not entirely sure yet (see below).
If a timestamp includes the offset, there shouldn't be any issue with holes. UTC+0 is nice, too, of course, though some might want to preserve the timezone in which the timestamp was actually created.
The bigger issue is usually to copy with those pesky leap seconds. It makes a difference whether one uses solar seconds ("posix" style; those are more commonly seen) or atomic seconds ("right" style) for the UNIX timestamp. Those differences accumulate over time, so you can have almost half a minute delta if you are not careful with timestamp conversion. If I remember correctly, rcs uses some rather awkward interative convergence algorithm to portably convert from human-readable date and time to UNIX timestamps.
Thus I'm still not sure whether it will be a UNIX-format timestamp or whether a human-readable date/time might be preferrable.
Best wishes Peter
-- Peter Backes, rtc@helen.PLASMA.Xg8.DE