build-gnu: disable date-debug test. It is dev focussed.

[sylvestre]

No description provided.

[github-actions]

GNU testsuite comparison:

GNU test failed: tests/misc/io-errors. tests/misc/io-errors is passing on 'main'. Maybe you have to rebase?
Skip an intermittent issue tests/tail/symlink (fails in this run but passes in the 'main' branch)
Skipping an intermittent issue tests/pr/bounded-memory (passes in this run but fails in the 'main' branch)
Skipping an intermittent issue tests/tty/tty-eof (passes in this run but fails in the 'main' branch)
Congrats! The gnu test tests/date/date-debug is no longer failing!
Congrats! The gnu test tests/csplit/csplit-heap is now passing!

[collinfunk]

I very strongly disagree that this is a developer focused feature.

Just this week I closed a few old bug reports reporting invalid dates like this:

$ date -d 'TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 2026-03-08 02:30:00 AM'
date: invalid date ‘2026-03-08 02:30:00 AM’

The --debug flag shows you where this fails and gives you some hints as to why it is the case:

$ date --debug -d 'TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 2026-03-08 02:30:00 AM'
date: parsed date part: (Y-M-D) 2026-03-08
date: parsed time part: 02:30:00
date: input timezone: TZ="America/Los_Angeles" in date string
date: using specified time as starting value: '02:30:00'
date: error: invalid date/time value:
date:     user provided time: '(Y-M-D) 2026-03-08 02:30:00'
date:        normalized time: '(Y-M-D) 2026-03-08 03:30:00'
date:                                             --
date:      possible reasons:
date:        nonexistent due to daylight-saving time;
date:        invalid day/month combination;
date:        missing timezone
date: invalid date ‘TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 2026-03-08 02:30:00 AM’

Most Californians would see this and remember this time does not exist due to daylight-savings time.

Without the --debug option, you rely on users knowing how to use zdump to see that this time doesn't exist:

$ zdump -v /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles | grep 2026
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles  Sun Mar  8 09:59:59 2026 UT = Sun Mar  8 01:59:59 2026 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles  Sun Mar  8 10:00:00 2026 UT = Sun Mar  8 03:00:00 2026 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles  Sun Nov  1 08:59:59 2026 UT = Sun Nov  1 01:59:59 2026 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles  Sun Nov  1 09:00:00 2026 UT = Sun Nov  1 01:00:00 2026 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800

I doubt most people know how to use zdump or that the program exists, since this information rarely matters. Even I had to look at the man page for it.

[sylvestre]

ok, make sense. debug is probably not the right name then