threads / discuss / 31188

Localization: Timestamps get wrong if using different locales

Subject: Localization: Timestamps get wrong if using different locales

## tl;dr

3 messages between Aug 5, 2012 and Aug 11, 2012.

replies: 2people: 2as markdown or json

Christoph Miebach· Aug 5, 2012, 09:08 UTC · lore

Hello!

Running this commands locally (german locale) lead to some wrong dates for the patches upstream.

git format-patch -o patches origin

git send-email --compose --no-chain-reply-to --to some@address.com --suppress-cc=author patches/0001-l10n-Turkish-update.patch

The local
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012
became
       Wed, 8 Dec 2004

So it looks like matching  DD=04=YY  MM=08=DD  and  YY=12=MM

German date format usually looks DD.MM.YYYY

A workaround for me was running the lines with LANGUAGE=en

I am using git-send-email 1.7.10.4 with the patch from here http://www.mail-archive.com/git@vger.kernel.org/msg05240.html but I do not expect this to do any harm here.

Shall I provide more information?

Regards

Christoph

Junio C Hamano· Aug 5, 2012, 20:47 UTC · re: Christoph Miebach · lore

Re: Localization: Timestamps get wrong if using different locales

Christoph Miebach <christoph.miebach@web.de> writes:

> Running this commands locally (german locale) lead to some wrong dates
> for the patches upstream.
>
> git format-patch -o patches origin

What does "git show -s --pretty=fuller HEAD" give you at this point? This is to check what kind of timestamps are stored in the original commit objects.

And what does "grep '^Date: ' patches/0001-*" show you at this point? This is to see if the problem is at the "format-patch" step.

> git send-email --compose --no-chain-reply-to --to some@address.com
> --suppress-cc=author patches/0001-l10n-Turkish-update.patch

And what does "grep '^Date: '" for the message that is received by recipients show at this step? They cannot be

Show 6 quoted lines

>
>
> The local
> Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012
> became
>       Wed, 8 Dec 2004

as these two do not even have times and zones. It should read something like

    Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2012 13:39:12 -0700

or something.

Also "Date" on which message do you see your problem with? The one that is created with --compose? Or the one that was originally produced by format-patch and then sent? Or both?

The timestamps used by git-send-email is obtained by calling time() function of Perl, and is not affected by timezone, and the function format_2822_time() implements the e-mail header timestamp in a way that should not be affected by any locales as far as I know, so it is curious where the "breakage" is coming from.

> Shall I provide more information?

Yes.

Christoph Miebach· Aug 11, 2012, 16:22 UTC · re: Junio C Hamano · lore

Re: Localization: Timestamps get wrong if using different locales

Hello!

What I am doing is: invoking a bash script that does the

git add ${i##$TXPATH/}/strings.xml

git commit --author="$AUTHOR" ${i##$TXPATH\/}/strings.xml -m "l10n: $LNAME update"

after a user confirmation.

IIUC setting LANGUAGE=en at the top of this script _did_ help. So I run everything with german locale for reproducing this.

On 05.08.2012 22:47, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Christoph Miebach <christoph.miebach@web.de> writes:
>
>> Running this commands locally (german locale) lead to some wrong dates
>> for the patches upstream.
>>
>> git format-patch -o patches origin
>
> What does "git show -s --pretty=fuller HEAD" give you at this point?
> This is to check what kind of timestamps are stored in the original
> commit objects.

See pretty_fuller.txt

> And what does "grep '^Date: ' patches/0001-*" show you at this point?
> This is to see if the problem is at the "format-patch" step.

See date_grep.txt

Show 19 quoted lines

>> git send-email --compose --no-chain-reply-to --to some@address.com
>> --suppress-cc=author patches/0001-l10n-Turkish-update.patch
>
> And what does "grep '^Date: '" for the message that is received by
> recipients show at this step?  They cannot be
>
>>
>>
>> The local
>> Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012
>> became
>>        Wed, 8 Dec 2004
>
> as these two do not even have times and zones.  It should read
> something like
>
>      Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2012 13:39:12 -0700
>
> or something.

It was a complete line. I just did not copy all of it, for I thought I already pointed out the problem.

The recipient uses en_CA.UTF-8 and guesses:
Date: 12-08-05 06:10 PM
it is Y-M-D, but git thinks it's M-Y-D

> Also "Date" on which message do you see your problem with?  The one
> that is created with --compose?  Or the one that was originally
> produced by format-patch and then sent?  Or both?

git log should show the translators name ($AUTHOR in the git commit line)

Sorry for the late (and probably still incomplete) reply. I can provide a complete example or send a patch to a dummy project if you prefer some time next week, I hope.

Regards

Christoph

commit b6f59b4a61f1bd203bb0d449dabac7b16351e2e1
Author:     Christoph Miebach <christoph.miebach@web.de>
AuthorDate: Mon Aug 6 00:07:54 2012 +0200
Commit:     Christoph Miebach <christoph.miebach@web.de>
CommitDate: Mon Aug 6 00:07:54 2012 +0200

    l10n: German update

Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 00:07:54 +0200