view mercurial/help/dates.txt @ 26482:d2e69584e330

templatekw: allow getlatesttags() to match a specific tag pattern

This will allow the latest class of tag to be found, such as a release candidate
or final build, instead of just the absolute latest.  It will be exposed in a
future patch.

It's unfortunate that the original 'latesttags' cache can't be used to determine
the proper values, but it isn't fully populated for the entire repo.  For
example, the {latesttagdistance} keyword on the Mecurial repo builds the cache
up back to the revision for 1.4.  If the pattern was 're:^0\.\d$', that wouldn't
be in the cache.  Maybe this can be optimized some other way, but for now, this
is the simpliest implementation.

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