[Suggestion] Remove timestamp from auto-generated code/documentation

[wing328]

In the coming major release 2.2.0, we want to remove {{generatedDate}} from the mustache template as this will introduce a lot of noise when it comes to reviewing the auto-generated code/documentation. Here is an example:

 package io.swagger.client;

 -@javax.annotation.Generated(value = "class io.swagger.codegen.languages.JavaClientCodegen", date = "2016-06-04T21:04:39.523+08:00")
 +@javax.annotation.Generated(value = "class io.swagger.codegen.languages.JavaClientCodegen", date = "2016-06-08T18:45:27.896+02:00")
  public class StringUtil {
    /**
     * Check if the given array contains the given value (with case-insensitive comparison).

If anyone has a good reason to keep it in the auto-generated timestamp, please reply to let us know.

[Edubits]

I would love to have them static, constant diffs are annoying. Related might be the auto documented docs, I noticed a few times that fields changed order, which gives unnecessary diffs as well.

[wing328]

Right. The authentication settings are not in any order so we need to sort them alphabetically to avoid the noise due to random order.

[cbornet]

There is an existing hideGenerationTimestamp property that can be used for this.
We just need to put it in the templates and use -DhideGenerationTimestamp=true to generate the samples

[wing328]

Right. The option is for Java only at the moment:

swagger-codegen/modules/swagger-codegen/src/main/java/io/swagger/codegen/languages/JavaClientCodegen.java

Line 49 in 691aa53

protected boolean hideGenerationTimestamp = false;

We can make it a general option to make it available in other langauges.

My suggestion is to remove the timestamp from the template without hideGenerationTimestamp

[ePaul]

Previous related discussion: #2318.
I'm not sure why that was closed – it looks like the original issue author just modified its own templates and thus lost interest?

[ePaul]

I think the default should be to have no timestamp. I'm not sure if there should be an option to include it.

By the way, I think what could be useful would be to include the Swagger-Codegen version in the generated files. While for the samples to be committed in our repository this should also be disabled (for the same reason as disabling the timestamps), having it on by default in the online generator would be useful for identifying the version in bug reports.

[cbornet]

We could set hideGenerationTimestamp to true by default ?

[wing328]

@ePaul instead of stamping every generated files with the swagger-codegen version. What about generating a file (e.g. .swagger-codegen-version) instead?

I agree including the swagger codegen version in the API clients or servers stubs will help us more easily troubleshoot issue.

[ePaul]

@wing328 either this, or putting it into the generated README (if there is some) might be better than putting it in every file, yes.