[PATCH 1 of 2 v2] Allow commit date before Unix epoch

[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 2016-04-02 12:48, Pierre-Yves David wrote:
> 
> 
> On 04/01/2016 05:55 PM, Florent Gallaire wrote:
>> # HG changeset patch
>> # User Florent Gallaire <fgallaire at gmail.com>
>> # Date 1459212616 -7200
>> #      Tue Mar 29 02:50:16 2016 +0200
>> # Node ID 8152e614ee77606b3e26f8935ded4157b4caa86c
>> # Parent  ff0d3b6b287f89594bd8d0308fe2810d2a18ea01
>> date: allow negative timestamp
>>
>> DVCS are very useful to store various texts (as legislation) written before
>> Unix epoch. Fri, 13 Dec 1901 is a nice gain over Thu, 01 Jan 1970.
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> We would be happy to get the ability to use negative timestamps back 
> into Mercurial, thanks for looking into it. (I double checked with Matt 
> Mackall, there is no sea monster hiding under the bed that would awaken 
> if we get that back.)

The "sea monster" was that parts of Python for Windows can't (or
couldn't) handle negative timestamps, which was the reason for my
dd24f3e7ca9e.

> However, there some things we need to fix in this series:
> 
> 1) We'll want your second patch, the one with an alternative fix for 
> issue2513 to be the first one so that we don't regress in the middle of 
> the series. This is useful for bisecting and also give us the ability to 
> partially accept series if some parts needs reword.
> (note that I've not reviewed this patch 2 in details yet and it might 
> need changes, from a quick glance we'll want a larger description of the 
> changeset to explain what is happening and why it is correct)

Which I (sort of) already wrote...

> 2) Actually most people missed your patch 2 because your did not used 
> patchbomb or the pushgate to send your patch. See our wiki for details 
> about how to send you series as a consistent group:
> 
>   https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/ContributingChanges#Emailing_patches
> 
> 3) We'll want some tests. If you are to allow a new range of value, we 
> want to make sure it is properly recorded and displayed. Ideally, you 
> would run theses new tests both on unix* and windows, but if you don't 
> have access to a windows machine, this is fine.
> 
> Thanks for looking into that and sorry for there bumpy reviews. Your 
> patch seems to raise a lot of attention.
>