Re: [PATCH] show_date(): rename the "relative" parameter to "mode"

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Feb 27, 2007, 23:59 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702271554120.12485@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vslcrb3l8.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Tue, 27 Feb 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> 
> How about --ago as a synonym, and --my-date for obeying TZ?
> "show in UTC time" can be had by something like:
> 
> 	$ TZ=UTC git log --my-date

Yes, although I would suggest that at that point we also use a shorter date format, since the timezone (by definition) is no longer valid or interesting.

But in general, there are other date issues - if we start showing the date in other non-rfc2822 formats (like skipping the timezone), we migth as well also support denser times..

For example, I occasionally love seeing the seconds, especially when I apply a series of patches from Andrew, and I see myself committing 5-6 patches per second - but it's just noise if you want a single-line thing. So showing dates as "yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm" makes sense (and sorts properly).

So instead of "--my-date", I'd suggest "--date[-format]=xyz" as an option, possibly even with a way to set some defaults for "git log" using the config file.

		Linus