mercurial/help/dates.txt

context: introduce p[12]copies() methods and debugp[12]copies commands

As mentioned earlier, I'm working on support for storing copy metadata
in the changeset instead of in the filelog.

In order to transition a repo from storing metadata in filelogs to
storing it in the changeset, I'm going to provide a config option for
reading the metadata from the changeset, but falling back to getting
it from the filelog if it's not in the changeset. In this compatiblity
mode, the changeset-optmized algorithms will be used. We will then
need to convert the filelog copy metadata to look like that provided
by changeset copy metadata. This patch introduces methods that do just
that.

By having these methods here, we can start writing changeset-optimized
algorithms that should work already before we add any support for
storing the metadata in the changesets.

This commit also includes new debugp[12]copies commands and exercises
them in test-copies.t.

Differential Revision: https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D5990

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