Possibly a bug

Jiergir Ogoerg· Nov 17, 2013, 02:59 UTC · lore

Hi, As suggested by the git book/tutorial I cloned "simplegit-progit" to learn using git. The issue: git log --since=5.years yields 2 commits, while git log --since=6.years yields 3 commits, despite the "Date" in both cases being March 2008. Is it a bug?

Using Fedora 20 amd64 with git version 1.8.4.2

Details:
//==> FIVE YEARS
simplegit-progit$ git log --since=5.years
commit ca82a6dff817ec66f44342007202690a93763949
Author: Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Mar 17 21:52:11 2008 -0700

    changed the verison number

commit 085bb3bcb608e1e8451d4b2432f8ecbe6306e7e7
Author: Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 15 16:40:33 2008 -0700

    removed unnecessary test code
//<== FIVE YEARS

//==> SIX YEARS
simplegit-progit$ git log --since=6.years
commit ca82a6dff817ec66f44342007202690a93763949
Author: Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Mar 17 21:52:11 2008 -0700

    changed the verison number

commit 085bb3bcb608e1e8451d4b2432f8ecbe6306e7e7
Author: Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 15 16:40:33 2008 -0700

    removed unnecessary test code

commit a11bef06a3f659402fe7563abf99ad00de2209e6
Author: Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 15 10:31:28 2008 -0700

    first commit
//<== SIX YEARS

Jeff King· Nov 17, 2013, 09:49 UTC · re: Jiergir Ogoerg · lore

Re: Possibly a bug

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 04:59:20AM +0200, Jiergir Ogoerg wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> As suggested by the git book/tutorial I cloned "simplegit-progit" to
> learn using git.
> The issue:
> git log --since=5.years
> yields 2 commits, while
> git log --since=6.years
> yields 3 commits, despite the "Date" in both cases being March 2008.
> Is it a bug?

No, but it is confusing.

The `--since` and `--until` flags use the committer date, not the author date. Try `git log --pretty=fuller`, and you will see that the author and committer dates do not match for the top two commits (their committer date is within 5 years).

Usually the two dates are the same, but they can be different if a commit is rebased, or applied via patch.

-Peff