[xwiki-devs] [Discussion] Committing date changes on document XML files

Hi, devs, This interesting discussion [1] came up recently on a github commit that lead us to realise that a practice which we have been doing since forever is not documented in our best practices guides and that we also seem to lack consensus on it. It`s about the practice of skipping date field changes from document XML pages when committing them to source control. This includes doc date and contentUpdateDate fields, but also attachment dates. You can see some arguments on the discussion[1], but I also wanted to mention that this practice goes in line with what we do for document versions (which is handled by the xar:format maven plugin goal which we execute every time, before committing XML pages). If we are to update doc dates, then we should also increment doc versions, otherwise it does not make any sense. The idea was, AFAIR, that XWIki`s code pages should not generate any updates in the user`s wiki content, in any way, and that and update of the code of a "system"/XWiki page should not show up as an update of *the user's content*, since it would otherwise confuse him. What we are currently missing from xar:format is exactly this: the reset of XML page dates to have a clearer and more consistent date for XWiki`s code pages. Your input is appreciated and the result of this discussion would be the update of our Development Practices [2] and Application Development Best Practices [3] pages. Thanks, Eduard ---------- [1] https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/commit/1938dd18e1d25b8c03e4cb222862… [2] http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/DevelopmentPractices [3] http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/ApplicationDevelopmentBestPra…