Dates in Commits and other issues of style (Re: [RFC 2/5] Pretty Print: show tz when using DATE_LOCAL)
From: Michael Witten <hidden>
Date: 2016-06-15 22:51:04
On Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:34:49 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
Michael Witten [off-list ref] writes:quoted
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:06:36 +0000 Currently, when the date mode is DATE_LOCAL, the time zone is never pretty printed;...This is a tangent but it is funny to see the unnecessary Date: in-body header for a series about date display. Please drop it.
No.
Backdating the author timestamp will make it harder to find the related discussion from the list archive; the only plausible benefit I can see is that you may get "I thought of this much earlier than when I posted it to the public for the first time" pee-in-the-snow value out of doing so, but that is done at the cost to all others who need to inspect the history later. Please don't.
What if I had submitted a pull request instead of inlined patches? Would you be asking me to wipe the dates in my repository? Would you rewrite the commits on your end? Let's suppose that I like backdating specifically for the "pee-in-the-snow" value; well, that's one of the prime motivators for doing unpaid, volunteer work, and that's one of the reasons that distributed SCM tools like git are so great: Unlike with, say, CVS, the actual author gets his or her information officially recorded. Perhaps you think we should dispense with identity information as well, given that it's just a pee-in-the-snow value... BUT WAIT! Names and email addresses are important because of copyright issues; we need to know whence came a contribution, after all. Well... don't you think the particular date at which something was written might be similarly valuable in a dispute over copyright? Junio, you'll take my pee-in-the-snow and you'll like it.
As a future reference, when you have a valid reason to override the
header information your MUA would give your message with an in-body
header, please leave a blank line after the in-body header to make the
result easier to read, like this:
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:06:36 +0000
Currently, when the date mode is DATE_LOCAL, the
time zone is never pretty printed;...Fair enough.
Also paragraphs that wrap lines at too narrow a margin is just as hard to read as paragraphs wrapped at a margin that is too wide.
I disagree that it's too narrow, and I feel like you are now nitpicking. Sincerely, Michael Witten