BUILDTIME: ISO 8601 format [PATCH]

[Ralph Siemsen]

Rob Landley wrote:

> So you have an aesthetic objection.  Lovely.

Yep.  That's all.  Others might feel different.  Maybe they will speak 
up.  Or not.  My apologies if people don't want to hear opinions.

> Have you ever used this field?

Yes.  Every time I reload software on one of my embedded systems (I do 
that sometimes 20 times a day) I look at this field to see if it is the 
version that I just compiled.  I also look at the banner that the kernel 
prints (Linux version blah blah gcc blah blah myname at mycomputer blah...)

> 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?

My prediction: if the change is made, most folks will not notice, but 
the odd manufacturing script will break, because its regex for 
collecting the date will need to be fixed.  This is a pretty easy fix, 
but the guy in charge of manufacturing will not know anything about 
regex, and will therefore just label system as "buggy all of a sudden". 
  Many months later, word might eventually make it back to this mailing 
list, and someone will ask why the format was changed.  Of course, by 
that time we'll say "it has been that way for months, why did you not 
complain earlier".

Anyhow, I think its pretty clear that I'm alone in my little "T is ugly" 
campaign, so I'll withdraw my comments.  Have at your ISO, RFC, TLA 
methodologies.  I'll just stick with "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Cheers,
-R