GNU bug report logs - #63006
Time zone database improvements

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Message #17 received at 63006 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
To: Leo Famulari <leo <at> famulari.name>
Cc: 63006 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#63006: Time zone database improvements
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2023 23:00:55 +0200

Hello!

Leo Famulari <leo <at> famulari.name> skribis:

> Currently, almost the entire distro is rebuilt when we need to update
> the time zone database, tzdata.
>
> We need to do this a few times a year, and it doesn't make any sense for
> packages to keep a static reference to this database which will be out
> of date in a few months.
>
> Instead, they should look up the time zones at run-time, which most
> programs that actually use time zones do.

Most programs behave fine though, right?  In particular, glibc honors
$TZDIR and we set TZDIR to the latest tzdata in (gnu system).

> These patches start improving the situation.
>
> Libical has committed a fix for this almost 5 years ago, but still
> hasn't released it, so we cherry-pick Nix's patch:
>
> https://github.com/libical/libical/issues/350

LGTM!

> Go wants to embed a copy of the database in case one cannot be found.  I
> don't see why having an incorrect time zone is better than no time
> zones, so here's a patch to remove the embedded copy.

Sounds good, but do we need to build it in a branch first?

> We have more work to do to remove or replace python-pytz, which
> unfortunately contains its own embedded copy of the database and a few
> thousand dependents. Luckily, it seems that Python 3.9 has made pytz
> obsolete:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DeprecatePytz#Deprecate_pytz

OK.

Thanks!

Ludo’.

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