Re: cgit, ages and chronological order

From: Stefan Sperling <stsp_at_stsp.name>
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2021 09:40:35 UTC
On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 02:32:52PM -0800, Mark Millard via freebsd-git wrote:
> author	George V. Neville-Neil <gnn@FreeBSD.org>	2021-11-10 17:51:42 +0000
> committer	George V. Neville-Neil <gnn@FreeBSD.org>	2021-11-10 18:09:19 +0000
> 
> information being based on local git commit timing (and clocks)
> vs. when the commits are pushed to FreeBSD servers: The display
> order is from the timing on the FreeBSD servers but the Age is
> based on the original commit (before the push). The longer the
> delay between commit and push, the more noticeable the
> distinction is.

This is not how Git works. If the server changed the timestamp then
it would also have to rewrite the commit object and change its hash.
Git's server will only ever store objects as they arrived on the wire.

Rather, both timestamps were created locally.
The above looks as if the author used git-rebase or similar on their own
commits. Some Git commands will update the committer field but leave the
author field as it is. These fields contain email address and timestamp.

Generally, sorting commits by committer timestamp will give the order
most people would expect. Unless some client has an unsynced clock, and
nothing can be done about that without a hypothetical smarter server and
client which support server-side rewriting of commits during push.