Re: [PATCH 0/6] Use time_t

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 10:30:20PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

One notable fallout of this patch series is that on 64-bit Linux (and
other platforms where `unsigned long` is 64-bit), we now limit the range
of dates to LONG_MAX (i.e. the *signed* maximum value). This needs to be
done as `time_t` can be signed (and indeed is at least on my Ubuntu
setup).

Obviously, I think that we can live with that, and I hope that all
interested parties agree.

I do not just agree, but I think the move to a signed timestamp is a big
improvement. Git's object format is happy to represent times before
1970, but the code is not. I know this has been a pain for people who
import ancient histories into Git.

It looks from the discussion like the sanest path forward is our own
signed-64bit timestamp_t. That's unfortunate compared to using the
standard time_t, but hopefully it would reduce the number of knobs (like
TIME_T_IS_INT64) in the long run.

-Peff