RFC: sort 'dive number' column by date, not number

[Dirk Hohndel]

BTW: this may be the all time winner in the "commit message length vs.
lines changed" category :-)

/D

On Sat, 2013-06-08 at 17:58 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Ok, so this sounds insane, but it fixes our currently broken sorting
> of dive trips vs plain dives not in trips.
> 
> The reason for that is simple: the dive trips are sorted by date, but
> that's column #0, and for plain dives is the dive number.
> 
> So currently the trip-vs-dive sorting looks at the date of the trip,
> and compares that to the number of the dive. Since the date of the
> trip is expressed as seconds-since-1970-in-UTC, unsurprisingly the
> dive number is generally much smaller (even for some very avid divers
> ;), and so the plain dives end up sorting way at the bottom (or at the
> top, if you do "oldest trips first"
> 
> Since the dive number *should* sort as the date, this stupid attached
> patch just makes us return the dive date instead.
> 
> Now, there are other possible solutions to this:
> 
>  - make the date of the dive be column 0, and make the dive number be column 1.
> 
>    Quite frankly, while more logical for this particular problem, it
> probably sucks as a solution. We do want to have a column we can sort
> dives by that is date-based, but doesn't include trips. And while the
> dive number *should* sort identically to the date one, the fact is
> that you can have dives without any numbering, so it doesn't.
> 
>    In contrast, all dives have dates, and sorting numbered dives by
> date should still result in sane behavior (and if it doesn't, then the
> insanity comes from the dive numbering, and odd sorting is the fault
> of the user and indicative of a problem)
> 
>  - We could possibly do something magical like sorting dives by number
> when they are inside trips, or when no trips exist at all. But then
> we'd sort by date when there are trips and the dive is outside the
> trip. But quite frankly, that just sounds insane.
> 
> So on the whole, I don't love this patch, but it seems to be the least
> confusing of the possibilities.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org>
> ---
> 
> Hmm? Any other ideas?