[RFC PATCH] date: add --date=elapsed and %aX/%cX placeholders by airvzxf · Pull Request #2368 · git/git

airvzxf · 2026-07-28T19:03:55Z

Motivation

The --date=human format and the %cr/%ch placeholders both produce
a localized English phrase that hides the precise amount of time
that has passed. A commit shown as "2 days ago" may in reality be
1 day 3 hours, or 1 day 23 hours. Switching to %ct and a calculator
solves the problem but is not glance-friendly.

The closest external tool that solves the same problem is
git-log-compact by Kyle J. McKay (2016), which the maintainer
declined to merge into Git core because it was a heavyweight change
to the oneline output rather than a date format.

What this patch adds

A new date format --date=elapsed and --date=elapsed-pad modelled
on uptime(1):

  seconds   --date=elapsed          --date=elapsed-pad
      39    "39s"                   "39s"
     984    "16m 24s"               "16m 24s"
   29268    "8h 7m 48s"             "08h 07m 48s"
 3024000    "1M 5d 0s"              "01M 05d 00h 00m 00s"
60527113    "1y 11M 5d 13h 5m 13s"  "01y 11M 05d 13h 05m 13s"

The padded variant zero-pads every emitted unit to at least two digits.

A commit timestamp that is in the future is reported as "0s", not the
localized phrase "in the future" that show_date_relative() emits.

Months are fixed at 30 days and years at 365 days, matching the
uptime(1) convention. They are consistent, and the same approximations
are already in use by Git's own show_date_relative() for the
relative-time format.

Two new pretty-format placeholders, %aX (author) and %cX (committer):

git log --format='%h (%aX) %s'
13c7afec21 (1d 2h 9s) The 8th batch
8c7817c361 (1y 3d 19h 5m 10s) Merge branch 'rj/meson-libexecdir-fix'
0e521a41b5 (11y 17d 21h 8m 40s) Merge branch 'et/http-proxyauth'

The placeholders mirror %ch and %cr, which also ignore the caller's
--date= and emit a fixed shape.

Open questions

Q1. The placeholder letter. The natural mnemonic is E
(Elapsed), but %aE, %cE and %gE are already taken
(mailmap-respecting email variants). This patch uses X as a free
letter. Would the maintainer prefer a different letter? I am not
attached to X.

Q2. Should --date=elapsed-pad be its own format name, or a
separate --date=elapsed plus a flag? Which mirrors
--date=human / --date=human-local / --date=iso /
--date=iso-local.

Q3. The "future timestamp" behaviour. This patch clamps a future
timestamp to "0s". An alternative would be to keep the relative
format's "in the future" wording.

Q4. %aX/%cX are hard-coded compact; padded output requires
%ad/%cd together with --date=elapsed-pad. Should a
paired %aY/%cY for padded also exist, or is the
asymmetry acceptable?

Patch

The patch modifies the existing date_mode_type enum, adds a new
show_date_elapsed() helper in date.c, wires it through
show_date() and parse_date_format(), exposes two placeholders
via format_person_part() in pretty.c, handles the new format in
builtin/blame.c for column width, updates the documentation, and
adds tests for both the date helper and the pretty-format
placeholder equivalence.

The full patch is attached below.

Testing

$ make DEVELOPER=1 && cd t &&
prove --no-color ./t0006-date.sh ./t4205-log-pretty-formats.sh
./t0006-date.sh ................ ok
./t4205-log-pretty-formats.sh .. ok
All tests successful.

The full test suite (1054 test files, 33832 tests) also passes on
this machine.

Thanks for your time. I am happy to iterate on any of the open
questions before posting a non-RFC version.

Copilot

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gitgitgadget-git · 2026-07-29T21:46:56Z

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dscho · 2026-07-29T22:00:43Z

@airvzxf please note that the PR description will be sent as kind of a "cover letter" between the diffstat and the patch. It is quite lengthy, and you will see that other PRs in this repository use much more succinct descriptions. Please consider condensing it dramatically (and maybe write it yourself instead of letting an LLM do that, as an LLM-generated cover letter will most likely scare away any potential reviewer, or worse, elicit angry responses?).

dscho · 2026-07-29T22:00:52Z

/allow

gitgitgadget-git · 2026-07-29T22:01:48Z

User airvzxf is now allowed to use GitGitGadget.

The --date=human format and the %cr/%ch placeholders both produce a localized English phrase that hides the precise amount of time that has passed. A commit shown as "2 days ago" may in reality be 1 day 3 hours, or 1 day 23 hours. Switching to %ct and a calculator solves the problem but is not glance-friendly. Add an uptime(1)-style elapsed-time format: --date=elapsed --date=elapsed-pad 39s 39s 8h 7m 48s 08h 07m 48s 1y 11M 5d 13h 5m 13s 01y 11M 05d 13h 05m 13s The placeholder letter is X because the obvious choice E is already used for the mailmap-respecting email variants (%aE, %cE, %gE). Signed-off-by: Israel Roldan <israel.alberto.rv@gmail.com>

airvzxf · 2026-07-30T05:38:03Z

/preview

gitgitgadget-git · 2026-07-30T05:39:07Z

Preview email sent as pull.2368.git.git.1785389946001.gitgitgadget@gmail.com

airvzxf · 2026-07-30T06:57:09Z

/preview

gitgitgadget-git · 2026-07-30T06:58:14Z

Preview email sent as pull.2368.git.git.1785394693090.gitgitgadget@gmail.com

airvzxf · 2026-07-30T06:59:52Z

/submit

gitgitgadget-git · 2026-07-30T07:01:36Z

Submitted as pull.2368.git.git.1785394879459.gitgitgadget@gmail.com

To fetch this version into FETCH_HEAD:

git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/ pr-git-2368/airvzxf/feature/date-elapsed-v1

To fetch this version to local tag pr-git-2368/airvzxf/feature/date-elapsed-v1:

git fetch --no-tags https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/ tag pr-git-2368/airvzxf/feature/date-elapsed-v1

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings July 28, 2026 19:03

github-project-automation Bot added this to Op-Amp Frequency Response and Applications Suite Jul 28, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this to Todo in Op-Amp Frequency Response and Applications Suite Jul 28, 2026

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 28, 2026

gitgitgadget-git Bot added the new user label Jul 29, 2026

airvzxf force-pushed the feature/date-elapsed branch from 1f46741 to 48da106 Compare July 30, 2026 04:37

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[RFC PATCH] date: add --date=elapsed and %aX/%cX placeholders - #2368

[RFC PATCH] date: add --date=elapsed and %aX/%cX placeholders#2368
airvzxf wants to merge 1 commit into
git:masterfrom
airvzxf:feature/date-elapsed

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