Most tests use test_tick or test_commit to get deterministic timestamps in commits. Some don't because they don't care about the timestamps. But they can still be annoying to debug, since the output changes from run to run. This series sets a default timestamp for those scripts, in a way that doesn't interfere with anybody using test_tick. The change is in the final commit. The others are preparatory to deal with fallout in the test suite. Normally fallout would give me pause about whether this is a good idea, but a) there's not much of it and b) I think it helped shake out questionable assumptions in those tests. This a replacement for the patches being discussed in: https://lore.kernel.org/git/pull.816.git.git.1594149804313.gitgitgadget@xxxxxxxxx/ It looks like Junio already picked up one of the fixes as jk/t6000-timestamp-fix. The first patch here is identical (so we can either drop that branch, or drop the first patch from this series and apply on top). [1/4]: t6000: use test_tick consistently [2/4]: t9700: loosen ident timezone regex [3/4]: t5539: make timestamp requirements more explicit [4/4]: test-lib: set deterministic default author/committer date t/t5539-fetch-http-shallow.sh | 4 +++- t/t6000-rev-list-misc.sh | 7 +++++-- t/t9700/test.pl | 6 +++--- t/test-lib.sh | 3 +++ 4 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) -Peff