[xwiki-devs] [VOTE] Update the xar plugin and stop committing XML wiki page date fields

Hi, devs. We have had 2 previous discussions on this topic: * July 2016 (discussion): https://markmail.org/thread/oodciq7pv6pj7eic * Jan 2018 (proposal): https://markmail.org/thread/ymwsebvr3k7voy3p And we have at least 2 issues on this topic: * Oct 2011: XWIKI-7058 <http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-7058>: Page creation date should be the date of the installation * Feb 2015: XCOMMONS-1447 <https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XCOMMONS-1447>: XAR plugin should replace the dates with a common number TL;DR: It's causing confusion for our users to install pages that are created in 2005/2009/etc. so we should avoid committing dates on git that users might end up installing. Reminder: Importing a document with empty dates will: * Use the current date if the document is new (i.e. does not exist in the wiki) * Use the existing dates if the document already exists in the wiki, if using backup import * Use the current user and current date for the document update date, if imported using non-backup import of EM extension install Adel and myself have extended the xar:verify and xar:format goals of the xar plugin to check for the existence of date fields in the XML wiki pages and to remove them. The fields are: * date * contentUpdateDate * creationDate * attachment/date See the PR https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-commons/pull/44/ This check (on both verify and format goals) is skippable entirely with the "xar.dates.skip property" (default to false) or "xar.dates.skip.documentList" for individual documents (list of doc references). I need your vote for accepting the existing PR and for removing the document dates (e.g. https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/pull/792) and your feedback in case you know of any problems that this might create. Also, please mention if you would prefer for this behavior to be skipped by default (and explicitly enabled on XWiki Standard, so that 3rd party code is not impacted by this change). Here's my +1 (enabled by default and skippable if needed). Thanks, Eduard