Re: git and time

David Lang [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

quoted

remember that a pach could be merged to many trees in any order. which
merge date do you want to know about?

The date that repository I am looking at with gitweb first had
that commit, of course.  What other dates did you have in mind?

if that repository is then merged into another one, what date would
that second one record for that commit? the date it was pulled there?

in many cases this would seem to be useless or distracting information
(you already display where in the history the merge took place, do you
really need to attach that date to all changes that arrive from the
branch?)

Usually, but not on fast forward.

Only when somebody is interested in the particular question
"when did this commit has become part of this branch" it becomes
relevant.  And do not get me wrong.  I am in principle agreeing
with you that this is an extra information for most of the time
-- I even doubt "when did this commit has become part of this
branch" is all that useful.

On Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:31:47 -0700
Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Only when somebody is interested in the particular question
"when did this commit has become part of this branch" it becomes
relevant.  And do not get me wrong.  I am in principle agreeing
with you that this is an extra information for most of the time
-- I even doubt "when did this commit has become part of this
branch" is all that useful.

It is interesting information for some people though.  For instance
someone wondering how long ago Linus published a certain security fix.
To be able to say to easily query gitweb and be able to report,
"Linus published that security fix X day ago etc.."

Of course, I agree with you that also knowing the revision number
such a commit appeared in is at least if not more important.  But
still I don't dismiss this date/time based question as completely
as you do.  The very fact that a gitweb user has brought this issue
forward (and this isn't the first time) suggests the information
is at least of casual interest to some people.

Sean