Bug#982328: locales: default fr_FR date format regression in 2.31
Package: locales
Version: 2.31-9
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
I use the fr_FR.UTF-8 locale. After upgrading from glibc 2.30-8 to
2.31-9, the output of the `date` command without arguments significantly
changed.
So far and with 2.30-8 still:
% date
lundi 8 février 2021, 20:31:43 (UTC+0100)
Using 2.31-9:
% date
lun. 08 févr. 2021 20:32:26 CET
This seems to come from locale settings:
With 2.30-8:
% locale -k d_t_fmt d_fmt date_fmt
d_t_fmt="%a %d %b %Y %T %Z"
d_fmt="%d/%m/%Y"
date_fmt="%A %-e %B %Y, %H:%M:%S (UTC%z)"
With 2.31-9:
% locale -k d_t_fmt d_fmt date_fmt
d_t_fmt="%a %d %b %Y %T"
d_fmt="%d/%m/%Y"
date_fmt="%a %d %b %Y %T %Z"
Note how date_fmt changed. It reflects a change in the
/usr/share/i18n/locales/fr_FR file shipped in the Debian package.
From what I can see, this date_fmt setting was
the object of a Debian-specific change part of
debian/patches/localedata/locales-fr.diff, which added date_fmt to
French locale definitions, where it was otherwise missing.
Now, 2.31 upstream saw a group change affecting most locales to add a
date_fmt definition:
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=commitdiff;h=75ba929987f6950dd008ef0f6270f1b21e9af511
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24054
I don't see that this change really means to relate to the resulting
format change in French locales. However when 2.31 was imported into
Debian, it logically required rebasing the patch mentioned above; from
the changelog:
> glibc (2.31-0experimental0) experimental; urgency=medium
>
> [ Aurelien Jarno ]
> * New upstream release:
[...]
> - debian/patches/localedata/locales-fr.diff: rebased.
But from what I can see, instead of being rebased to keep (re)defining
date_fmt, these parts of the patch were altogether dropped in favor of
the unhelpful upstream date_fmt setting.
I've enjoyed the previous date format that's been in use for so long,
it looked just fine and dandy, and I would like to keep enjoying it
without disruption: as a Frenchman, the one in 2.31 seems unnatural and
uncommon.
I can imagine how this would have been a rebasing oversight. The
upstream change took a very generic group approach to preclude a
fallback to a default MDY date order in locales where date_fmt was not
defined, which is not helpful here for French locales in Debian as they
already had a proper and even better date_fmt definition; the upstream
change didn't mean to challenge any already existing date_fmt setting.
So I really believe the previous date_fmt should be kept, with the
corresponding parts of the locales-fr.diff patch brought back.
Failing that or in the meantime, is there any way to customize this
system setting, apart from modifying the locale definitions owned by the
Debian package?
Regards,
-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
Versions of packages locales depends on:
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.74
ii libc-bin 2.31-9
ii libc-l10n 2.31-9
locales recommends no packages.
locales suggests no packages.
-- debconf information:
* locales/default_environment_locale: fr_FR.UTF-8
* locales/locales_to_be_generated: en_US ISO-8859-1, en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8, fr_FR ISO-8859-1, fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8, fr_FR@euro ISO-8859-15
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