Subject: Re: [bug#49042] [PATCH 0/2] WIP gnu: Add ruby-taskjuggler.

From: Giovanni Biscuolo <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2021 11:42:42 +0200

Hello,

Giovanni Biscuolo <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

> I'm on a foreign distro and if I run the program this way:
>
>  TZDIR=/usr/share/zoneinfo tj3 -o tutorial tutorial.tjp 
>
> all is fine.

I just found the related bug #36870 [1] and as the original reporter I'm
incorrectly assuming Guix packages are using Guix timezone package (when
set as package input) on foreign distro also.

Mark H Weaver wrote:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

  On Guix systems, /etc/environment includes an entry that sets TZDIR to
  the equivalent of "$(guix build tzdata)/share/zoneinfo".

  When using Guix on top of another distro, an alternative choice might be
  to set TZDIR to "/usr/share/zoneinfo".  I'm not sure which setting is
  preferable on non-Guix systems.

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

and Ludovic Courtès added:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

    I agree that it’d be nice to somehow tell users about ‘TZDIR’, but I’m
    reluctant to introducing yet another profile file.

    I’m not sure what would be the best approach!

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

So AFAIU all I have to do is to fix my foreign distro environment.

Also, AFAIU from #40881 we should avoid setting tzdata as inputs of our
packages (to avoid massive rebuilds) and let our packages look up zones
at runtime with $TZDIR; this also makes me understand a little bit more
clearly why we have "tzdata-for-tests"... and I'm gonna use it in my
next version of the patch.

A new patch version will follow... soon (TM)

Happy hacking! Gio'

[...]

[1] https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=36870

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures