Dates in Commits and other issues of style (Re: [RFC 2/5] Pretty Print: show tz when using DATE_LOCAL)

From: Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 22, 2011, 14:08 UTC
Message-ID: <811b01a9-f10e-4444-9e5e-581adaf059c2-mfwitten@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vtydrutbq.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:34:49 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:06:36 +0000
>> Currently, when the date mode is DATE_LOCAL, the
>> time zone is never pretty printed;...
>
> This is a tangent but it is funny to see the unnecessary Date: in-body
> header for a series about date display.  Please drop it.

No.

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> Backdating the author timestamp will make it harder to find the related
> discussion from the list archive; the only plausible benefit I can see is
> that you may get "I thought of this much earlier than when I posted it to
> the public for the first time" pee-in-the-snow value out of doing so, but
> that is done at the cost to all others who need to inspect the history
> later.  Please don't.

What if I had submitted a pull request instead of inlined patches? Would you be asking me to wipe the dates in my repository? Would you rewrite the commits on your end?

Let's suppose that I like backdating specifically for the "pee-in-the-snow" value; well, that's one of the prime motivators for doing unpaid, volunteer work, and that's one of the reasons that distributed SCM tools like git are so great: Unlike with, say, CVS, the actual author gets his or her information officially recorded.

Perhaps you think we should dispense with identity information as well, given that it's just a pee-in-the-snow value...

BUT WAIT!

Names and email addresses are important because of copyright issues; we need to know whence came a contribution, after all.

Well... don't you think the particular date at which something was written might be similarly valuable in a dispute over copyright?

Junio, you'll take my pee-in-the-snow and you'll like it.

Show 9 quoted lines

> As a future reference, when you have a valid reason to override the
> header information your MUA would give your message with an in-body
> header, please leave a blank line after the in-body header to make the
> result easier to read, like this:
>
>         Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:06:36 +0000
>
>         Currently, when the date mode is DATE_LOCAL, the
>         time zone is never pretty printed;...

Fair enough.

> Also paragraphs that wrap lines at too narrow a margin is just as hard to
> read as paragraphs wrapped at a margin that is too wide.

I disagree that it's too narrow, and I feel like you are now nitpicking.

Sincerely, Michael Witten