BUILDTIME: ISO 8601 format [PATCH]

[Rob Landley]

On Tuesday 29 November 2005 12:25, Ralph Siemsen wrote:
> Shaun Jackman wrote:
> > I'd prefer to see a standard ISO 8601 time format used. Specifying a
> > "+0000" time zone is redundant; UTC is assumed if the time zone is not
> > specified. Please apply.
> >
> > -BUILDTIME := $(shell TZ=UTC date -u "+%Y.%m.%d-%H:%M%z")
> > +BUILDTIME := $(shell TZ=UTC date -u "+%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M")
>
> Any change you make to this is likely to break existing places that
> check the time.  How many such places exist, I don't know.
>
> I really dislike the "T" in the middle of the string.

So you have an aesthetic objection.  Lovely.

Have you ever used this field?

Do you have plans for using this field?

Can you even imagine a practical scenario in which you might use this field?

> Aside from the 
> human parsing issue, the other problem with this format is, that it is
> crying out to be "internationalized" at some point.  Non-english
> speakers will (legitimately) want the "T" to be something else, and next
> we'll have to use UTF-8 encoding on our date strings...

We don't "have to" do anything.  We can quite happily ignore them unless they 
can come up with a reason why this field might mean anything to anybody.

I'm still waiting on that one.  If you want a fully internationalized format 
we could be dumping integer seconds since midnight january 1, 1970 there for 
all I care.  (That's nicely sortable, timezone independent, language 
independent, and equally annoying to everybody.  No, I don't care if they use 
a counting system other than roman numerals.  Really I don't.)

Before this discussion I hadn't even noticed this field existed, and what I'm 
waiting for is an explanation of why anybody anywhere would care.  I'm not 
swayed by "I don't like the color, therefore we should make it configurable" 
style arguments.  Give me a _functional_ argument.  What is this field 
actually used for?

Anybody?

Rob
-- 
Steve Ballmer: Innovation!  Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.