Re: Is there way to set git commit --date to be older than 1970 ?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 30, 2014, 17:24 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqr3xpwjvj.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAOE_JxJp0nA_p_42yOyk_nMjsyMaovj0Fx6AJ5nywiEQfB5XAQ@mail.gmail.com>

Peter Vojtek <peter.vojtek@gmail.com> writes:

> It seems the commit date can be between 1970 and 2100 (on my 32bit
> linux), however man git (section DATE FORMATS) claims ISO 8601
> standard is supported.

The date formats section of "git log" only talks about the output format (I do not see in "man git" any section about date formats, by the way), once Git understands and records the timestamp in its internal representation (which is "seconds since the epoch"; as I already said, theoretically it should be possible to record negative number of seconds there, the current code does not allow it).

The documentation may need to be clarified, independent from what the implementation does on the input side. The current text from "git log" reads like so:

       --date=(relative|local|default|iso|iso-strict|rfc|short|raw)
           Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable
           format, such as when using --pretty.  log.date config
           variable sets a default value for the log command’s
           --date option.

The word "shown" is meant to stress that this description is about output side, but apparently it was misread as if somehow a user can affect the input by giving --date=iso or something, so perhaps you would want to suggest a better phrasing?

Thanks.