[PATCH] use iso8601-compliant dates by default (issue812)

[Matt Mackall]

On Mon, 2008-02-11 at 19:41 +0000, Frank A. Kingswood wrote:
> Matt Mackall wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-02-07 at 23:32 +0100, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
> >> # HG changeset patch
> >> # User Dirkjan Ochtman <dirkjan at ochtman.nl>
> >> # Date 1202423525 -3600
> >> # Node ID 0f55c22e4016f3248d931f931a3ef1363d725225
> >> # Parent  f89f7ecf017ec0c9a92d466aa682c737e98f8190
> >> use iso8601-compliant dates by default (issue812)
> > 
> > As discussed on IRC, this changes output from way too many commands that
> > our users are likely to be parsing with custom tools. We can't risk
> > breaking users' toys just to be prettier.
> 
> I think it is not about prettyness, it is about unambiguity.
> Not everyone is in the US, and standards are good to follow.

It is just about prettiness because there are zero real bugs here.
The current format is not ambiguous at all because the month is not
numeric:

date:        Thu Dec 06 17:29:01 2007 -0600

Yes, it is English, but that's just because you're in an English locale.
ISO format is available today via templates.

> Better done before 1.0 than stick with an obsolete date format.

Again, 1.0 is not an invitation to make non-backward-compatible changes.
Changing the output of the log command, possibly the most frequently
machine-parsed output we have, Just Ain't Happening.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.