What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

Posted May 31, 2012 4:24 UTC (Thu) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968)
Parent article: What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

When upgrading from fedora 16 to 17, was surprised by the disappearance of ddate from the standard build of util-linux.

It seems we now have to recompile util-linux with "--enable ddate" or pick this : https://github.com/bo0ts/ddate

Does feature usually vanishe this way during distro upgrades?

What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

Posted May 31, 2012 5:55 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Yes, that does happen and sometimes unintentionally. RPM changelog usually has some indicator of the reason if it is a deliberate change.

What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

Posted May 31, 2012 19:54 UTC (Thu) by epithumia (subscriber, #23370) [Link] (4 responses)

There was nice discussion thread, which for me at least conveniently appears as the first google hit for "ddate fedora". http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-Augus...

And, yes, distros do occasionally get rid of pointless junk like that, and for good reason.

What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

Posted Jun 1, 2012 14:21 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (guest, #36106) [Link] (1 responses)

It's "pointless junk" like this that makes me believe the Linux world really is different from other places. In the midst of of grey-faced corporate seriousness it's nice to know that you can still find ddate and sometimes even sl. "Was that a train?" -- surprised colleague.

Irrational arguments aside, I fall in to the "What's the harm?" camp. This is an attack without justification of any kind and I just don't understand the hostility from the upstream maintainer. Was there any user that actually asked for ddate to be disabled by default?

Thankfully Debian has taken conservative approach for the time being.

What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

Posted Jun 1, 2012 16:11 UTC (Fri) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Today is Boomtime, the 6th day of Confusion in the YOLD 3178

Yeah, I sort of really agree with you. Didn't know about ddate, but I do miss the sense of fun there was ten years ago... It's okay to laugh! At least in my book...

What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

Posted Jun 1, 2012 16:44 UTC (Fri) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]

As a Wholly Discordian Episkopos I find your assessment of ddate offensive. To make matters worse it's Friday so I can't even enjoy a bun with my beefy miracle. Where do I direct my faux indignation?

What's new in Fedora 17 (The H)

Posted Jun 18, 2012 16:24 UTC (Mon) by JoshDavis (guest, #85181) [Link]

epithumia,

With all due respect, the fact that you personally don't use a utility doesn't make it "pointless junk". I use ddate every day. As far as I'm concerned, the date command which returns the date from the Christian calendar is pointless junk, but I'm not trying to get it removed from Linux because I know that there are people who use it. ddate should have been kept for the same reason.