From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:29:28 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Accept dates before 2000/01/01 when specified as seconds since the epoch
Message-ID: <7vtztl5vvb.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <11811175153355-git-send-email-johannes.sixt@telecom.at>

I vaguely recall hitting the same issue soon after date.c was
done, and sending in a patch in the same spirit but with
different implementation (I essentially duplicated that "seconds
since epoch" without any cutoff as the last ditch fallback) long
time ago (this was before I took git over; the patch was rejected).

It almost makes me wonder if it is better to introduce a special
syntax to denote "seconds since epoch plus timezone offset" for
our Porcelain use, instead of keeping this arbitrary cut-off
date which nobody can agree on and which forces us to roll back
from time to time.  For one thing, such a syntax would allow us
to talk about a timestamp before the epoch.

Perhaps

	"epoch" [-+] [0-9]+ " " [-+][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]

?