Re: [PATCH] git-cvsimport: support local timezone

From: Christopher Rorvick <chris@rorvick.com>
Date: Oct 12, 2012, 00:14 UTC
Message-ID: <CAEUsAPYaYGDHWkixf9U27_Hsa7QqCWq3csKtBH7MrjnMD6kKJQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <50774BA9.40609@alum.mit.edu>

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> On 10/11/2012 10:48 PM, Chris Rorvick wrote:
>> CVS patches are unconditionally imported with a UTC timezone.  Allow
>> the local timezone by adding -l to the command line or specifying
>> cvsimport.l in the config.
>>
>> This could be made the default behavior, as setting TZ=UTC in the
>> environment before doing the import is equivalent to the current
>> behavior.  But since a new default may be an unwelcome surprise to
>> some, make this new behavior available os an option.
>
> According to rcsfile(7), all times in RCS/CVS files are recorded in UTC.
>  So why do you need this feature?
>
> Michael

Hi Michael,

Precisely because of this limitation. RCS files are not as expressive as a Git commit so I need a way to fill in the blanks.

This is analogous to the cvs-authors file. The RCS files in a CVS repository say the author of my commits is "crorvick" but that is neither my name nor email. cvsimport allows me to overcome this limitation by specifying a mapping from author username to full name and email.

Likewise, just because the RCS file has a UTC timestamp does not mean the commit originated in Greenwich, UK. Git includes the timezone offset in its timestamps, so it is reasonable to allow me to specify what is appropriate.

This is not a big deal for a one-time import as a simple filter-branch run can fix this pretty quickly. But this feature would be nice when running cvsimport incrementally.

Thanks!

Chris Rorvick