[dribnet]

It's my understanding that - because of obscure constants in the git codebase - it's a bad idea to use dates before Sat, 03 Mar 1973 09:46:40 GMT because the usable git epoch is 1970 + 100000000s. More details available here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=625480

FWIW: I routinely start my git repos with an empty commit to allow history rewrites and use Jan 1st, 1974 as my own epoch.

[codyps]

FYI: git supports rewrites to the implicit root commit with `git rebase --root` (and similar), there isn't a need for an extra empty commit.

[spb]

Pretty sure that bug has since been fixed, I generated a dummy commit with a date of 0 a few months ago.