[Libreoffice] [Libreoffice-qa] Naming builds. Please???

[Pedro Lino]

Hi Lionel

> Git commit IDs as identifiers have the huge problem that they are not
> comparable (one cannot say which one is "greater") without referring
> to the repository. How about we also put the *commit* (not author)
> timestamp (in UTC) of the top node (commit), and maybe the branch?

That would help!

> Something like:
>
> Build assembled from:
>  repo  commit   date               branch
>  core: 4f11d0a 2011-11-16 21:57:28 master
>  help: adcf6d5 2011-11-05 14:01:21 master
>  ...
>
> Or instead of pretty-printing the date, just put it as seconds
> since the epoch:
>
>  core: 4f11d0a 1321480648 master
>  help: adcf6d5 1320501681 master

That would solve the problem when looking into the log file but not
when looking at the About box.

Picking up your (excellent) idea of using the date and converting to a
linear value: if each repository was given a Birth Date and time since
that date converted to a linear value (age), using the Date function
you could get a 10 digit value able to separate builds with one second
time difference.

E.g. If the Core repository was created at midnight Sept 28th 2010
(TDF's birthday) or in linear time (times 100000 to eliminate the
point) 4044900000, then the 4f11d0a 2011-11-16 21:57:28 master

age would be 41491490. This seems like a nice easy number to compare.
In fact a build using code from one second later would be 41491491.

All this takes is attributing an arbitrary birth date for each
repository and very simple calculations.

Please do consider this!

Thank you again, Lionel!