Re: [PATCH] doc: set actual revdate for manpages

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 14, 2023, 18:40 UTC
Message-ID: <64399e28eed60_5f7732949f@chronos.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqa5zas7xf.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> > Formatted output from a repository working tree changes from
> > "04/14/2023" to "2023-04-13".  The value change may be intended,...
> 
> Forgot to mention another thing.  While it may be a good idea to tie
> the datestamp etched in the formatted result to that of the source
> material, rather than the date the formatter happened to have been
> run, the committer date is more appropriate than the author date for
> that purpose, as the former is the date that the change made on the
> latter date (which is earlier) has become a part of the whole, from
> which the formatted result was produced.
> 
> It may not make a big practical difference:

Or _any_ practical difference.

Show 10 quoted lines

>  * For an individual who is trying out the changes just made, the
>    committer time and the author time are likely identical.
> 
>  * For a release process, what is at the tip of the released branch
>    is likely be the release notes and version bump, recorded by the
>    releaser, and again the committer time and the author time are
>    likely identical.
> 
>  * For results of a pull request, the times are likely identical for
>    the merge commit.

Agreed that committer == author in these cases.

> but from the philosophical standpoint, it does matter.

I prefer to focus on the real rather than hypothetical (or philosophical).

I do create my own releases (e.g. 2.40.0+fc1) and a real issue with the version script (rather than philosphical) is that it only considers annotated tags, so I have to carry a patch that adds `--tags` to the `git describe` command.

Shouldn't dealing with real issues of real people have a higher priority than philosophical issues?

For the record, I do agree the committer date feels more proper, but it doesn't make any real difference, I just wonder about the priorities.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras