On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 11:39, Ian Pilcher <arequipeno@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/30/23 10:22, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 at 19:10, Miro Hrončok <mhroncok@redhat.com> wrote:
>> We would also need to ensure UTC work even without tzdata installed.
>
> Yes, that would be useful.
>
> Although IMHO even that seems like a nice-to-have not an absolute
> showstopper. Most containerized workloads that don't need time zone
> info probably aren't using ZoneInfo("UTC") to convert from UTC to UTC,
> they're probably not using ZoneInfo at all.
>
>>
>> I would be reluctant to carry this as a downstream-only patch. And the upstream
>> window for changes like this has already closed for Python 3.12.

Rather than expecting runtimes and applications to be fixed to work
without any timezone information, perhaps the best way forward would be
to create a tzdata-utc (and similar Java and Python packages).

(Sorry if this has already been suggested & rejected.  I don't remember
seeing it in this thread, but ...)


I have not seen it and I think it is probably the best way to deal with this. Going from how many sysadmin tasks I have dealt with where tzdata is broken on a system.. a LOT of existing code being used in a lot of places is silently relying on it.. usually in ways where you end up with a bad crash long after startup, etc. A bare set of whatever fulfills utc and/or defaults from LANG=C would at least get them working.

--
Stephen Smoogen, Red Hat Automotive
Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle. -- Ian MacClaren