Re: resolving ambiguity in action stamps (was: Everyone, please stop making my life more difficult)

[Eric S. Raymond]

Joshua Judson Rosen <address@hidden>:
> Sorry--I mostly just wasn't paying close enough attention six months ago
> to point out all of the angles of this issue...; though I *did* raise
> this "ambiguity of reference by timestamp" issue at that time--and thought
> that you'd given an ACK with a statement you were going to fix it by using
> "#{sequence-number}" suffixes to distingiush between multiple distinct
> items in the same "{ISO-date}!{email-address}" hashbucket:
> 
>     https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg01117.html
> 
>     https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg01113.html
> 
> (that first link is your response; the second is my message--which
>  included an example of why the "same timestamps, different commit-
>  objects" situation might exist in a repository)

I remeber that.  I thought I was going to fix it that way too.

Then I found a showstopper. Possibly it has a solution I haven't found yet.

The problem is this: suppose you have such a suffix, and several nodes
with the same date on a DAG.  What's your rule for mapping suffix 
to individual node?

I couldn't invent one.  I believe this is mathematically equivalent to 
total-ordering the DAG. Which you can't do.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>