Show and prioritize author data over commit data on commit list
The author date is when the commit was first created (git commit
is run), while the committed date may be very recent because of a rebase. It is often unhelpful to show the committed date because if a branch is rebased, all commits will show the same time.
We should use the authored data rather than the committed date on the commit list
Proposal:
We should use all author
info on commit list (e.g. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/commits/master)
This includes:
- Name
- Date
Original Proposal:
UX-wise, I think authored date should be used in all gitlab commit listings (such as https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/commits/master) , not commit date.
Here's why I think authored date is more appropriate:
- This mirrors the way the git command works by default in its commit listings (
git log
) - see https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#_pretty_formats - This mirrors the way github works by default in its commit listings (see a listing like https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master).
- Let's say you rebase an entire repo's history: Now all the date/times for the entire repo's history will show up the more-or-less exactly the same in gitlab commit listing pages -- the time that the rebase occurred. Rebasing like this happens more often than some people think -- sometimes it's necessary to remove sensitive files/info from far back in the history, which necessitates a more-or-less complete rebasing of a repo.
- It's also extremely common to rebase a particular branch before committing, squashing and reorganizing commits as you go. Any time this happens, it would mean all the commits into a given branch will show the same dates (or dates very close together) rather than the date they were originally authored. Again -- pretty weird, in my opinion.
- If you do a
git commit --amend
, amending a commit from a couple of weeks back -- just tweaking the commit message a bit -- then force push it or push it to a different branch, the same sort of oddity will occur in the gitlab commit listing - it will show the current date there instead of the original authoring date from several weeks ago.
Basically, you frequently "lose" a lot of valuable information from gitlab's commit listings by displaying the "commit" date instead of the original authoring date. This is probably why none of the other popular commit listings -- git and github -- display the commit date.
Can gitlab please use the original authoring date instead like everything else does? Or if some people prefer the commit date, provide an option to choose between author date/commit date in the gitlab commit listings or simply display both dates?
Though I'm not sure who does prefer commit date rather than authoring date... can you please explain why you prefer this, if you do? Nothing else works this way, as far as I am aware. Gitlab appears to be going completely against convention in this respect, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks for reading!