On 2019-09-11 at 07:57, Michael Stone wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 08:36:49AM +0200, Rainer Dorsch wrote:
> 
>> Am Dienstag, 10. September 2019, 22:52:03 CEST schrieb Greg 
>> Wooledge:

>>> https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg741032.html
>> 
>> Many thanks for all the replies. Greg, the perfect explanation you 
>> already gave here
>> 
>> https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg741096.html
>> 
>> (that explains why buster behaves differently).
>> 
>> I think it would have been worth an entry for apt-listchanges,
>> since it might at least change the output of some local scripts
>> (like it did here).
> 
> apt-listchanges in what?

Given that (as far as I'm aware) apt-listchanges just reports the
changelog and NEWS entries from the various packages, the question
should really be: a changelog or NEWS entry in what package, and what
version of that package?

In this case, the relevant package appears to be libc6, from the source
package glibc.

The changelog entry for glibc 2.28-5 mentions a backport of what looks
to my eye like the patch which makes this change, albeit without
mentioning what effect the change itself will have; to figure that out,
you have to read the referenced (Debian) bug report, #877900. That patch
appears to have been released upstream in glibc 2.29, which doesn't seem
to have hit Debian testing yet.

So I think the suggestion would have been that either the changelog or
the NEWS entry from the Debian-packaged version of glibc which first
included the patch which makes this change should have had a comment
pointing out that the default date format for this common locale would
change.

> If a script is relying on the output of a program like date without 
> specifying either the C locale or a date format, it's almost 
> certainly doing something wrong--those strings are expected to
> change depending on things like locale settings, and are for humans
> to read, not programs.

This is quite true, however.

-- 
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

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