threads / discuss / 74

Parseable commit header

Subject: Parseable commit header

## tl;dr

3 messages between Apr 17, 2005 and Apr 17, 2005.

replies: 2people: 3as markdown or json

Stefan-W. Hahn· Apr 17, 2005, 06:22 UTC · lore

Hi,

after playing a while with git-pasky it is a crap to interpret the date of commit logs. Though it was a good idea to put the date in a parseable format (seconds since), but the format of the commit itself is not good parseable.

For easy converting the commit log header in readable format it should be in
another format, perhaps like mail header: 
- Every field should start al column zero wih filedname end up with a colon.
- Every fieldname starts with an upcase letter.
- The dates of author and committer should be fields of it own.
- The commit message itself is seperated by a blank line.

Example current log entry:

commit fe077e9d16819b72c275ea40b254f22b4d236f8b tree 98b57b0310e0e2309fe4a6c24a6abea31a4d6c6d parent f0adb6cf1bf603537afff5cf26b90e81321db225 author Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz> 1113684324 +0200 committer Petr Baudis <xpasky@machine> 1113684324 +0200

s/me/commit/ in git log output.

Should be:

Commit: fe077e9d16819b72c275ea40b254f22b4d236f8b
Tree: 98b57b0310e0e2309fe4a6c24a6abea31a4d6c6d
Parent: f0adb6cf1bf603537afff5cf26b90e81321db225
Author: Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz> 
Author-Date: 1113684324 +0200
Committer: Petr Baudis <xpasky@machine> 
Committer-Dater: 1113684324 +0200

s/me/commit/ in git log output.

This date entries are now easy parseable and convertable.

- Stefan

-- 
Stefan-W. Hahn                          It is easy to make things.
/ mailto:stefan.hahn@s-hahn.de /        It is hard to make things simple.

Linus Torvalds· Apr 17, 2005, 15:57 UTC · re: Stefan-W. Hahn · lore

Re: Parseable commit header

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, Stefan-W. Hahn wrote:

> 
> after playing a while with git-pasky it is a crap to interpret the date of
> commit logs. Though it was a good idea to put the date in a parseable format
> (seconds since), but the format of the commit itself is not good parseable.

Actually, it is. The commit stuff removes all special characters from the strings, so '<' and '>' around the email do indeed act as delimiters, and cannot exist anywhere else.

			Linus

David A. Wheeler· Apr 17, 2005, 16:49 UTC · re: Stefan-W. Hahn · lore

Re: Parseable commit header

Stefan-W. Hahn wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Hi,
> 
> after playing a while with git-pasky it is a crap to interpret the date of
> commit logs. Though it was a good idea to put the date in a parseable format
> (seconds since), but the format of the commit itself is not good parseable.

> Should be:

...

> Committer-Dater: 1113684324 +0200

I'm probably coming in late to the game, but exactly
why is seconds-since-epoch format used instead of a format
more easily understood by humans?  Yes, I know tools
can easily convert that, but you're already using an ASCII format;
why not just record it in a format that's easily eyeballed like ISO's
yyyymmddThhmmss [timezone]? E.G.:
  20050417T171520 +0200
or some such?  I'm SURE that people will mention things
like "the patch I posted on April 17, 2005", and having the
patch format record times that way, directly, would be convenient
to the poor slobs^H^H^H^H^H developers who come later.
Yes, a tool can handle the conversion, but choosing formats
so a tool is unneeded for simple stuff is often better....!

--- David A. Wheeler