From: Dan Johnson <computerdruid@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 21:08:56 GMT
Subject: Re: Is there way to set git commit --date to be older than 1970 ?
Message-ID: <CAPBPrnuxAPmKe_aRb9USh=cOu4jMZaYzOorXC_RJa8b8ROq+iA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqh9ymy8np.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 3:31 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Peter Vojtek <peter.vojtek@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> It seems the commit date can be between 1970 and 2100 (on my 32bit
>> linux),...
>
> The underlying data representation records time as number of seconds
> since epoch (1970-01-01).  Theoretically the codepaths that read
> data could consider negative timestamps to represent times before
> the epoch, but in the context of source code control, negative
> values are more likely to be an indication of a bug or a user
> mistake, and I do not think any existing code in Git is prepared to
> pass such a timestamp as a sane value---instead they diagnose a
> failure and die.

I remember a pretty old thread found some success storing timestamps this way:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/152433

-Dan Johnson