Extend %changelog to support full timestamps (#903)

[pavlinamv]

The newly accepted date format is

Mon Jan 6 09:02:22 CEST 2016

(like output of "date" command). Original format "Mon Jun 6 2016" is still supported.

Resolves: http://www.rpm.org/ticket/903

[Conan-Kudo]

Looks good to me.

[pmatilai]

NAK, requires further work as the new format leaks timezone and year into the name field, see http://lists.rpm.org/pipermail/rpm-maint/2016-October/004571.html for details.

[Conan-Kudo]

@pavlinamv Would it be possible to support the date+time format where the year comes before the time? It's rather strange to see the year mentioned after the time.

For example, your example date would be structured as:

Mon Jan 6 2016 09:02:22 CEST

This is much more logical than the standard date form and matches how RPM renders date stamps currently when doing something like rpm -qi <package>.

[pmatilai]

Strange/logical is in the eye of the beholder, git also places year after the time (but puts timezone in the end). As for me, my eyes are so used to seeing that format that having the year in the middle seems weird. Ditto for the timezone. Bike-shedding will not get us anywhere, so unless somebody comes up with concrete pro/con reasons, any format is as good as the other. Which is why I'd actually prefer a macro configurable format.

[Conan-Kudo]

@pmatilai It would also be a pure extension of the existing changelog date stamp, as it would purely append new data in the date stamp, rather than mix it up a bit.

[ffesti]

Thanks you very much for the patch, your patiences and the additional effort trying to implement the parsing strptime().

Merged.