Re: Finer timestamps and serialization in git

> > But I don't quite understand your claim that there's no format
> > breakage here, unless you're implying to me that timestamps are already
> > stored in the git file system as variable-length strings.  Do they
> > really never get translated into time_t?  Good news if so.
> Maybe just take some of the object ID bits as being the fractional time
> timestamp. They are effectively random, so should do a reasonable job of
> distinguishing commits in a repeatable manner, even with full round tripping
> via older git versions (as long as the sha1 replicates...)

> As I understand it the commit timestamp is actually free text within the
> commit object (try `git cat-file -p <commit_object>), so the issue is
> whether the particular git version is ready to accept the additional 'dot'
> factional time notation (future versions could be extended, but I think old
> ones would reject them if I understand the test up thread - which would
> compromise backward compatibility and round tripping).