AIX, test-dirstate.t and absurd dates

[Jim Hague]

I've had a test failure on AIX for a few versions. It doesn't seem to me to be 
important, rather a minor niggle, and so I've been mulling over what to do. 
But I'm no hugely familiar with the test setup, and I'm stuck.

test-dirstate.t has a final test for absurd dates:

  $ touch -t 195001011200 a
  $ hg st
  $ hg debugstate
  n 644          2 2018-01-19 15:14:08 a

The problem is that AIX complains:
touch: invalid date format `195001011200'

After some investigation, it looks like AIX will fail any attempt to set a 
date before 1/1/1970 (i.e. a negative time). This is enforced at the OS level, 
not in the touch command, so I can't work around it.

Any suggestions?
-- 
Jim Hague - jim.hague at acm.org          Never trust a computer you can't lift.