Hi Jeff, Your patch looks good to me. Here is my test result: $ patch -p1 < x.patch patching file cache.h patching file date.c patching file strbuf.c $ make $ ~/git-testing/bin/git --version $ ~/git-testing/bin/git log 11990eba -1 --date=format:%s commit 11990eba0be50d1ad0655ede4062b7130326c41f (HEAD -> trunk, origin/trunk, origin/HEAD) Author: rillig <rillig@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: 1635633678 indent: move debugging functions to a separate section $ ~/git-testing/bin/git cat-file -p 11990eba tree 5d62150f5e2bafd3db76641450ca5d902302a039 parent 892557a74bd49983fac28366b772b53c9216ca73 author rillig <rillig@xxxxxxxxxx> 1635633678 +0000 committer rillig <rillig@xxxxxxxxxx> 1635633678 +0000 indent: move debugging functions to a separate section PS: Thanks Junio for clarification, Jeff's explanation is very clear, I'm just frustrated with the limitations of the system, I greatly appreciate Jeff's work. Best regards, Dongsheng Song On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 12:03 PM Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Sun, Oct 31, 2021 at 11:46:40AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > Dongsheng Song <dongsheng.song@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > > > Thank you for the clarification, it's really a disappointing answer. > > > > The situation may be disappointing, but I found the answer eminently > > clear and helpful. > > The most disappointing thing IMHO is the lousy state of system-level > date routines. ;) > > I have some patches working towards allowing timestamps before 1970, and > the system routines are quite unreliable (both in giving insufficient > portable interfaces, but also just doing weird things with negative > values). > > > > Perhaps the manual needs to be clearer about this limitation. > > > > Sounds like we have a volunteer ;-)? > > Yeah, I'd be happy if somebody wanted to note this in the manual. But if > anybody wants to pursue manually intercepting %s, I think the patch > below might point them in the right direction. > > I won't be at all surprised if it has funny corner cases. Our > tm_to_time_t() is pretty basic and hacky. We can't use mktime() because > it only handles the current system timezone. OTOH, I think the tz_offset > we're undoing here originally came from comparing mktime() versus > tm_to_time_t() via local_time_tzoffset(), so it could be cancelling out > any bugs exactly. :) > > So maybe the code below is sufficient, but we'd probably at least want > some tests on top. Maybe something somebody interested would like to > pick up and run with? > > --- > diff --git a/cache.h b/cache.h > index eba12487b9..aa6f380d10 100644 > --- a/cache.h > +++ b/cache.h > @@ -1588,6 +1588,7 @@ timestamp_t approxidate_careful(const char *, int *); > timestamp_t approxidate_relative(const char *date); > void parse_date_format(const char *format, struct date_mode *mode); > int date_overflows(timestamp_t date); > +time_t tm_to_time_t(const struct tm *tm); > > #define IDENT_STRICT 1 > #define IDENT_NO_DATE 2 > diff --git a/date.c b/date.c > index c55ea47e96..84bb4451c1 100644 > --- a/date.c > +++ b/date.c > @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ > /* > * This is like mktime, but without normalization of tm_wday and tm_yday. > */ > -static time_t tm_to_time_t(const struct tm *tm) > +time_t tm_to_time_t(const struct tm *tm) > { > static const int mdays[] = { > 0, 31, 59, 90, 120, 151, 181, 212, 243, 273, 304, 334 > diff --git a/strbuf.c b/strbuf.c > index b22e981655..8b8b1900bc 100644 > --- a/strbuf.c > +++ b/strbuf.c > @@ -1019,6 +1019,13 @@ void strbuf_addftime(struct strbuf *sb, const char *fmt, const struct tm *tm, > strbuf_addstr(&munged_fmt, "%%"); > fmt++; > break; > + case 's': > + strbuf_addf(&munged_fmt, "%"PRItime, > + tm_to_time_t(tm) - > + 3600 * (tz_offset / 100) - > + 60 * (tz_offset % 100)); > + fmt++; > + break; > case 'z': > strbuf_addf(&munged_fmt, "%+05d", tz_offset); > fmt++;