user-local-time shows empty time for people with no commits

[rahgurung]

Maybe a nicer message will help.

[fregante]

We do already show this on hover:

[rahgurung]

In my system, it comes only when I hover over that time area.

[fregante]

Right, it's a title attribute

[rahgurung]

Will that be enough? How about not adding time part for such users?

[fregante]

Yeah ideally we wouldn't show the icon at all, but sometimes it might take several seconds until it appears, so we have a "loading" in place. The loading is then replaced by the time or -. Perhaps we could:

• show Not found, instead
• check the cache first, if it's there and it's undefined, we shouldn't add the icon at all.

[sindresorhus]

how Not found, instead

👍

[darkred]

I believe that it would be better if no icon nor message was displayed for people with no commits,
i.e. as @fregante described as a different approach:

check the cache first, if it's there and it's undefined, we shouldn't add the icon at all.

I agree with the OP that having a plain clock icon (followed by a - or not) doesn't help,
but I also find the current Not found message distracting, and, at first glance, it always gives me the wrong impression that the relevant account itself no longer exists/has been deleted, instead that's just a RG feature message. e.g.:
.

[yakov116]

What if we do Timezone not found?

[darkred]

I think it will be a long, distracting string (even if it's in smaller font)
which doesn't offer any info to the user apart from RG debugging
(i.e. that RG is indeed enabled and that it couldn't find the user timezone).
Here is a mockup:

I prefer it in its initial form:

[fregante]

If we show the clock icon while loading and then hide it without a reason, it might look like a bug.

If we don't show the clock icon while loading, the user doesn't know whether some information is coming… or if it tried and failed.

"Timezone unknown" would be the more appropriate response.

There could be an additional optimization: if the time is already cached as "missing", then don't show the icon at all.

[darkred]

That's what I also had in mind. Just to summarize:

• at the initial mouse hover, show the clock icon while loading. Then:
  • if the information has been found, append the found timezone
  • if the information has not been found, append "Timezone unknown" instead
• at next mouse hover:
  • if the timezone is already cached as value, show the clock icon and the retrieved timezone
  • if the timezone is already cached as "missing", don't show anything at all, not the icon not any text message.

[fregante]

Code-wise, this could be done with a timer instead of manually checking the cache, etc.

Example to be inserted on line 104

const timeout = delay(300);
const date = getLastCommitDate();
// This will delay adding the icon for 300ms, enough to check if the date is store as "not found"
const race = await Promise.race([timeout, date]);
if (race === false) {
	// `date` was cached as "not found", so don't add the icon at all
	return;
}

The code and comments might be improvable.

[darkred]

Thank you both for fixing this.