From: Pyeron, Jason J CTR (US) <jason.j.pyeron.ctr@mail.mil>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:44:34 GMT
Subject: RE: Millisecond precision in timestamps?
Message-ID: <871B6C10EBEFE342A772D1159D13208537AC601E@umechphg.easf.csd.disa.mil>
In-Reply-To: <20121127204828.577264065F@snark.thyrsus.com>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric S. Raymond
> Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 3:48 PM
> 
> Because I do a lot of work on repository conversion tools, I've had
> to learn a lot of detail about ontological mismatches between
> version-control systems - especially places where you lose metadata
> moving between them.
> 
> In general, git metadata can carry forward almost all the metadata in
> a Subversion repository.  Among the handful of minor exceptions (empty
> directories, flow structure, certain kinds of mergeinfos) there is one
> that stands out because it seems to be an implementation detail rather
> than a consequence of fundamentally different design decisions.
> 
> I refer to the one-second precision of git timestamps.  Subversion
> stores its commit and property-change timestamps to microsecond
> precision; conversion tools have to throw the subsecond part of
> this information away.
> 
> Has going to timestamps with the full precision of the system clock
> been considered and rejected, or am I the first to bring this up?
> 
> If I were to write refactoring patches that treated "timestamp" as
> an ADT, with a view towards hiding the difference between int and
> float timestamps and eventually experimenting with float ones,

Do you really mean floating point numbers with approximate imprecise values?