ddate is missing

**Chronon** · April 28th, 2012

After upgrading to 12.04 I find that ddate is missing. Searching for ddate on launchpad doesn't return anything, though the string is apparently mentioned in i3status.

Anybody have a clue on what happened to it or how to get it back?

**Chronon** · April 29th, 2012

Apparently it is missing from the Precise version of util-linux. (It's there in the Oneiric package.)

**RSparker** · May 1st, 2012

As you probably know, or maybe not, ddate has a long and checkered history. If you want a bit of context look through the util-linux Debian package changelog. You'll find gems such as this:

Code:

* Drop ddate.  Closes: #149321, #174459, #180737

Bug #149321 is a famous one and represents the core of the problem, i.e. some people with dubious moral compasses are easily offended by fictional/satirical religions. Needless to say common sense prevailed and ddate was put back in on the next version.

But a while ago it was nipped in the bud (upstream) when someone at Red Hat made building it optional:

Code:

build-sys: add --enable-ddate

Don't build this crazy thing by default.

Signed-off-by: Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>

Nice.

So there you have it, you now have to build util-linux with --enable-ddate to get it. I think I'll start to separate distros on the basis of whether or not they use this flag when building the package.

**Chronon** · May 2nd, 2012

Thanks for the reply! Yes, I knew that there had been some attempts to remove it in the past.

Do you think a bug report would do any good or is its absence intentional by Ubuntu?

**RSparker** · May 2nd, 2012

I don't believe it was intentional, the build defaults just changed and the maintainer probably doesn't use ddate so it went unnoticed.

There's already a bug (#988925) open on launchpad which I updated with the information I mentioned previously.

**Chronon** · May 11th, 2012

Thanks for all of the useful information. I successfully built my own util-linux with ddate enabled. Hopefully this gets fixed in Ubuntu's repositories soon.

I'll mark this thread as solved, since I have recovered ddate on my system and the ultimate resolution of the problem depends on action taken on the bug report.

**lisati** · May 11th, 2012

Originally Posted by Chronon

Thanks for all of the useful information.

+1. For a moment, I had memories of a similarly named MS-DOS utility that performed an almost entirely unrelated function, and needed to look it up!

**frankob** · June 19th, 2012

I have solved this by installing the Debian package of util-linux, as the ddate flag seems to be the only difference with the Ubuntu one.
But this crazy inquisitor at Fedora/Red Hat/upstream (Karel Zak) has serious intentions of removing ddate whatsoever in the future... http://osdir.com/ml/fedora-devel-lis.../msg01725.html

We must stop them!
Hail Eris!