Subject: bug#62509: 30.0.50; Changes to naming for Windows stapshots - PATCH

From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2023 21:14:34 -0700

On 9/12/2023 7:33 PM, Corwin Brust wrote:
>  From my standpoint, it is challenging to pick the date to use.  I do
> most releases for GNU rather manually, and might take a day or two
> doing it. Is there information to be gained from knowing the "build
> start date" (but not time?) that isn't better sourced by git log
> <REVISION>?

I think so, yes. For those of us close to the development process, the 
Git SHA is the most-useful bit of info for sure, but thinking back to a 
couple of years ago before I contributed to Emacs, the date would have 
been a lot more useful. It would let me see at a glance how new the 
snapshot is. It would also make it easier to tell users what snapshot to 
try, e.g. if you're a package author: "Make sure you use the Emacs 
snapshot from at least YYYY-MM-DD in order to prevent such-and-such bug."

The timestamp of the file itself isn't as useful for this purpose since, 
as you say, the process is a bit manual and could be a few days after 
the latest commit.

As for what date exactly to use, I'd say, "Use the CommitDate in either 
US Eastern time (the FSF's time zone), or possibly UTC."