Re: policy around 'wontfix' bug tag

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Richard Hector wrote:
> #389251 (coreutils: date's -d switch doesn't honour locale) - it's quite
> an old one. But I found another instance in which the same claim applies:

Its age makes it hard to conclude nowadays' habits with newly submitted bugs.

The topic looks as promising for Debian bug report success as would be
a report about the Linux kernel. I.e. nearly zero.

Upstream looks like the problem is known and no fix can be expected soon:

  https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Options-for-date.html
  "
  ‘-d datestr’
  ‘--date=datestr’
     Display the date and time specified in datestr instead of the current
     date and time. datestr can be in almost any common format.
     [...]
     Note: input currently must be in locale independent format.
     E.g., the LC_TIME=C below is needed to print back the correct date in
     many locales:
       date -d "$(LC_TIME=C date)"
     See Date input formats.
     [ https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Date-input-formats.html ]
  "

The google results of "locale input" and "linux locale input" make me
think that there is no general input support with our locales.
Maybe some particular programs take the environment variable settings
as hint for own input interpreters. But in general our localization seems
to be restricted to output texts.

Adding to the bug report a link to above upstream documentation would
have been a friendly gesture to the bug reporter.
The bug was not closed, though. So "wontfix" does not mean "rejected"
or "invalid", but rather expresses the realistic expectation of the sender.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas