Comments | fallenpegasus: Rant. TZ data, and annoying behavior by Java and Perl

fallenpegasus

Rant. TZ data, and annoying behavior by Java and Perl

Oct 23, 2007 11:33

I just installed the Sun JRE RPM. I can't help but notice that it installed into /usr/java/jre*/lib/zi/ a nearly complete timezone database in it's own java-ish format.

All modern UNIX machines already have a completely complete timezone database, called the Olson Zoneinfo database, usually kept in /usr/share/zoneinfo/. It's kept exactingly ( Read more... )

perl, sun, java, time, geek, timezones, rant

Comments 7

hollyking October 23 2007, 18:55:26 UTC

The only reason I can think of to include it is for systems, such as Windows, that don't have the Olson database.

fallenpegasus October 23 2007, 20:24:55 UTC

In such cases, they can pull it in, if they need it.

But even then, the smart thing is to pull in the zoneinfo db in it's native format.

And lobby Microsoft to use it...

hollyking October 23 2007, 20:30:19 UTC

Agreed.

codetoad October 23 2007, 19:09:11 UTC

Python's std libs have no timezone concept, but pytz does this.

ckn October 23 2007, 19:38:41 UTC

I agree that zi is likely flawed and not up to date. IIRC this past spring when we did the DST change there were some FAQ describing how to roll your own zi files because of this flaw. ...and it was something that we rapidly merged into our production systems due to zi being made of up of old zonefiles....

helix90 October 23 2007, 19:41:36 UTC

According to http://tzinfo.rubyforge.org/ the Ruby library is just a call to the Olson database.

At least they appear to have gotten that right in one.

elfs October 23 2007, 19:43:01 UTC

Note the fine print:

http://tzinfo.rubyforge.org/

"TZInfo is a Ruby library that uses the standard tz (Olson) database to provide daylight savings aware transformations between times in different time zones. The tz database is compiled into Ruby modules which are packaged in the release. No external zoneinfo files are required at runtime."

*Sigh*