From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:03:40 GMT
Subject: Re: git format-patch from date never set
Message-ID: <7v7hxwtlf7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <325c62f60907251549o27ebc8f2gcd1d728adb662ffd@mail.gmail.com>

Dan Savilonis <djs@n-cube.org> writes:

> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 6:31 PM, Alex Riesen<raa.lkml@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Neither. This is not a date, but a part of "loosely defined" mbox format.
>>
>
> In the examples of mbox format I have found, the date in the From:
> line is generally the same as in the Date: line, albeit in a more
> ambiguous format. Further, the the git code treats it as a date and
> attempts to set it. It remains at the default date only because
> git_committer_info() is called without GIT_COMMITTER_DATE set.
>
> So is the code misleading? Was it designed to just meet the minimal
> requirement of having a date-like string to comform to the mbox
> format? What's the disadvantage to using the real commit date?

Having it as a fixed date-looking string was to help /etc/magic entry
people may want to invent to detect format-patch output.