Subject: Re: [PATCH] gitweb: last-modified time should be commiter, not author

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:54:49 +0100

On Sun, 25 Jan 2009, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:

> Subject: [PATCH] gitweb: last-modified time should be commiter, not author

Should be really either "[PATCH 1/2]" or "[PATCH 5/4]" or "[PATCH 5/6]"
just in case for the next patch, because next patch _depends_ on this
one, and just in case of threading problem it should be marked as it;
it also makes easier to apply patches from emails saved as individual
files each.

>
> The last-modified time header added by RSS to increase cache hits from
> readers should be set to the date the repository was last modified. The
> author time in this respect is not a good guess because the last commit
> might come from a oldish patch.
> 
> Use the committer time for the last-modified header to ensure a more
> correct guess of the last time the repository was modified.

Good catch, good thinking IMHO. Committer date has much better chance
to be monotonic than author date, and is more close related to 
_publishing_ date (author date is more of _creation_ date).

Lack signoff; if Junio forges it (or you reply that it should be
signed off), you can add from me

Acked-by: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>

P.S. I wonder what other web interfaces do, for example cgit. I guess
that web interfaces for other SCMs like SVN::Web, ViewVC etc. do not
have this problem because they have only one, single date.

> ---
>  gitweb/gitweb.perl |    2 +-
>  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/gitweb/gitweb.perl b/gitweb/gitweb.perl
> index 756868a..8c49c75 100755
> --- a/gitweb/gitweb.perl
> +++ b/gitweb/gitweb.perl
> @@ -6015,7 +6015,7 @@ sub git_feed {
>  	}
>  	if (defined($commitlist[0])) {
>  		%latest_commit = %{$commitlist[0]};
> -		%latest_date   = parse_date($latest_commit{'author_epoch'});
> +		%latest_date   = parse_date($latest_commit{'committer_epoch'});
>  		print $cgi->header(
>  			-type => $content_type,
>  			-charset => 'utf-8',
> -- 
> 1.5.6.5
> 
> 

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland