view mercurial/help/dates.txt @ 26755:bb0b955d050d

streamclone: support for producing and consuming stream clone bundles

Up to this point, stream clones only existed as a dynamically generated
data format produced and consumed during streaming clones. In order to
support this efficient cloning format with the clone bundles feature, we
need a more formal, on disk representation of the streaming clone data.

This patch introduces a new "bundle" type for streaming clones. Unlike
existing bundles, it does not contain changegroup data. It does,
however, share the same concepts like the 4 byte header which identifies
the type of data that follows and the 2 byte abbreviation for
compression types (of which only "UN" is currently supported).

The new bundle format is essentially the existing stream clone version 1
data format with some headers at the beginning.

Content negotiation at stream clone request time checked for repository
format/requirements compatibility before initiating a stream clone. We
can't do active content negotiation when using clone bundles. So, we put
this set of requirements inside the payload so consumers have a built-in
mechanism for checking compatibility before reading and applying lots of
data. Of course, we will also advertise this requirements set in clone
bundles. But that's for another patch.

We currently don't have a mechanism to produce and consume this new
bundle format. This will be implemented in upcoming patches.

It's worth noting that if a legacy client attempts to `hg unbundle` a
stream clone bundle (with the "HGS1" header), it will abort with:
"unknown bundle version S1," which seems appropriate.

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