On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 10:30:20PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > One notable fallout of this patch series is that on 64-bit Linux (and > other platforms where `unsigned long` is 64-bit), we now limit the range > of dates to LONG_MAX (i.e. the *signed* maximum value). This needs to be > done as `time_t` can be signed (and indeed is at least on my Ubuntu > setup). > > Obviously, I think that we can live with that, and I hope that all > interested parties agree.
I do not just agree, but I think the move to a signed timestamp is a big improvement. Git's object format is happy to represent times before 1970, but the code is not. I know this has been a pain for people who import ancient histories into Git. It looks from the discussion like the sanest path forward is our own signed-64bit timestamp_t. That's unfortunate compared to using the standard time_t, but hopefully it would reduce the number of knobs (like TIME_T_IS_INT64) in the long run. -Peff
