view mercurial/help/dates.txt @ 40009:842ffcf1d42f

storageutil: extract most of emitrevisions() to standalone function

As part of implementing a storage backend, I found myself copying
most of revlog.emitrevisions(). This code is highly nuanced and it
bothered me greatly to be copying such low-level code.

This commit extracts the bulk of revlog.emitrevisions() into a
new standalone function. In order to make the function generally
usable, all "self" function calls that aren't exposed on the
ifilestorage interface are passed in via callable arguments.

No meaningful behavior should have changed as part of the port.

Upcoming commits will tweak behavior to make the code more
generically usable.

Differential Revision: https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D4803

Some commands allow the user to specify a date, e.g.:

- backout, commit, import, tag: Specify the commit date.
- log, revert, update: Select revision(s) by date.

Many date formats are valid. Here are some examples:

- ``Wed Dec 6 13:18:29 2006`` (local timezone assumed)
- ``Dec 6 13:18 -0600`` (year assumed, time offset provided)
- ``Dec 6 13:18 UTC`` (UTC and GMT are aliases for +0000)
- ``Dec 6`` (midnight)
- ``13:18`` (today assumed)
- ``3:39`` (3:39AM assumed)
- ``3:39pm`` (15:39)
- ``2006-12-06 13:18:29`` (ISO 8601 format)
- ``2006-12-6 13:18``
- ``2006-12-6``
- ``12-6``
- ``12/6``
- ``12/6/6`` (Dec 6 2006)
- ``today`` (midnight)
- ``yesterday`` (midnight)
- ``now`` - right now

Lastly, there is Mercurial's internal format:

- ``1165411109 0`` (Wed Dec 6 13:18:29 2006 UTC)

This is the internal representation format for dates. The first number
is the number of seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 00:00 UTC). The
second is the offset of the local timezone, in seconds west of UTC
(negative if the timezone is east of UTC).

The log command also accepts date ranges:

- ``<DATE`` - at or before a given date/time
- ``>DATE`` - on or after a given date/time
- ``DATE to DATE`` - a date range, inclusive
- ``-DAYS`` - within a given number of days of today