never fallback relative times to absolute

Previously, for dates older than 12 months we fell back to just giving the
absolute time.  This can be a bit jarring when reading a list of times.

Instead, let's switch to "Y years, M months" for five years, and then just
"Y years" after that.

No particular reason on the 5 year cutoff except that it seemed reasonable
to me.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

diff --git a/date.c b/date.c
index d75dff42405404ec86820a534620c1ba68cd9116..1165d30adfa783f7cbaa871e38a1370f9f9c4996 100644 (file)
--- a/date.c
+++ b/date.c
@@ -133,7 +133,25 @@ const char *show_date(unsigned long time, int tz, enum date_mode mode)
                        snprintf(timebuf, sizeof(timebuf), "%lu months ago", (diff + 15) / 30);
                        return timebuf;
                }
-               /* Else fall back on absolute format.. */
+               /* Give years and months for 5 years or so */
+               if (diff < 1825) {
+                       unsigned long years = (diff + 183) / 365;
+                       unsigned long months = (diff % 365 + 15) / 30;
+                       int n;
+                       n = snprintf(timebuf, sizeof(timebuf), "%lu year%s",
+                                       years, (years > 1 ? "s" : ""));
+                       if (months)
+                               snprintf(timebuf + n, sizeof(timebuf) - n,
+                                       ", %lu month%s ago",
+                                       months, (months > 1 ? "s" : ""));
+                       else
+                               snprintf(timebuf + n, sizeof(timebuf) - n,
+                                       " ago");
+                       return timebuf;
+               }
+               /* Otherwise, just years. Centuries is probably overkill. */
+               snprintf(timebuf, sizeof(timebuf), "%lu years ago", (diff + 183) / 365);
+               return timebuf;
        }
 
        if (mode == DATE_LOCAL)