diff mbox series

[v2] rev-list: clarify git-log default date format

Message ID xmqqcz6av3ta.fsf_-_@gitster.g (mailing list archive)
State Superseded
Headers show
Series [v2] rev-list: clarify git-log default date format | expand

Commit Message

Junio C Hamano Feb. 16, 2023, 12:42 a.m. UTC
The documentation mistakenly said that the default format was
similar to RFC 2822 format and tried to specify it by enumerating
differences, which had two problems:

 * There are some more differences from the 2822 format that are not
   mentioned; worse yet

 * The default format is not modeled after RFC 2822 format at all.
   As can be seen in f80cd783 (date.c: add "show_date()" function.,
   2005-05-06), it is a derivative of ctime(3) format.

Stop saying that it is similar to RFC 2822, and rewrite the
description to explain the format without requiring the reader to
know any other format.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
---
 * The discussion stalled and the topic was left in limbo for a few
   weeks.  Let's attempt to reboot it instead of silently waiting
   for a rerolled version from the original author.

 Documentation/rev-list-options.txt | 11 +++++------
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

Comments

Jeff King Feb. 16, 2023, 2:15 a.m. UTC | #1
On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 04:42:25PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> The documentation mistakenly said that the default format was
> similar to RFC 2822 format and tried to specify it by enumerating
> differences, which had two problems:
> 
>  * There are some more differences from the 2822 format that are not
>    mentioned; worse yet
> 
>  * The default format is not modeled after RFC 2822 format at all.
>    As can be seen in f80cd783 (date.c: add "show_date()" function.,
>    2005-05-06), it is a derivative of ctime(3) format.
> 
> Stop saying that it is similar to RFC 2822, and rewrite the
> description to explain the format without requiring the reader to
> know any other format.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
> ---
>  * The discussion stalled and the topic was left in limbo for a few
>    weeks.  Let's attempt to reboot it instead of silently waiting
>    for a rerolled version from the original author.

Thanks for keeping this moving. The proposed text looks great to me.

-Peff
Junio C Hamano Feb. 16, 2023, 2:58 a.m. UTC | #2
Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 04:42:25PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> The documentation mistakenly said that the default format was
>> similar to RFC 2822 format and tried to specify it by enumerating
>> differences, which had two problems:
>> 
>>  * There are some more differences from the 2822 format that are not
>>    mentioned; worse yet
>> 
>>  * The default format is not modeled after RFC 2822 format at all.
>>    As can be seen in f80cd783 (date.c: add "show_date()" function.,
>>    2005-05-06), it is a derivative of ctime(3) format.
>> 
>> Stop saying that it is similar to RFC 2822, and rewrite the
>> description to explain the format without requiring the reader to
>> know any other format.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
>> ---
>>  * The discussion stalled and the topic was left in limbo for a few
>>    weeks.  Let's attempt to reboot it instead of silently waiting
>>    for a rerolled version from the original author.
>
> Thanks for keeping this moving. The proposed text looks great to me.

Thanks, but the formatting is broken, and needs a line with "--" on
it at the end.  What I will queue on 'seen' already has the
correction.
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/Documentation/rev-list-options.txt b/Documentation/rev-list-options.txt
index ff68e48406..9ae7ccdaa9 100644
--- a/Documentation/rev-list-options.txt
+++ b/Documentation/rev-list-options.txt
@@ -1100,12 +1100,11 @@  preferred format.  See the `strftime` manual for a complete list of
 format placeholders. When using `-local`, the correct syntax is
 `--date=format-local:...`.
 
-`--date=default` is the default format, and is similar to
-`--date=rfc2822`, with a few exceptions:
---
-	- there is no comma after the day-of-week
-
-	- the time zone is omitted when the local time zone is used
+`--date=default` is the default format, and is based on ctime(3)
+output.  It shows a single line with three-letter day of the week,
+three-letter month, day-of-month, hour-minute-seconds in "HH:MM:SS"
+format, followed by 4-digit year, plus timezone information, unless
+the local time zone is used, e.g. `Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 +0000`.
 
 ifdef::git-rev-list[]
 --header::