FS#59428 - [glibc/tzdata] tzdata.zi not deployed

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Paul Ganssle (pganssle) - Monday, 23 July 2018, 15:13 GMT
Last edited by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Friday, 10 August 2018, 16:18 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To Andreas Radke (AndyRTR)
Bartłomiej Piotrowski (Barthalion)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

Description:
The `tzdata.zi` file was added in 2017c and holds a small text copy of all data. It is also the only official place where the tzdata version file is deployed (in a comment at the top of the file). As of 2018e-1, Arch Linux does not deploy this file, meaning that applications using tzdata.zi (particularly to retrieve the tzdata version) will not work. Can this file be deployed along with the remainder of the zoneinfo files?

tzdata.zi is generated by the standard `make install` target.

Steps to reproduce:
1. pacman -S tzdata
2. ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
3. Check to see if tzdata.zi exists in the directory
This task depends upon

Closed by  Andreas Radke (AndyRTR)
Friday, 10 August 2018, 16:18 GMT
Reason for closing:  Implemented
Additional comments about closing:  2018e-2
Comment by loqs (loqs) - Monday, 23 July 2018, 18:45 GMT
@pganssie does this patch to the PKGBUILD resolve the issue for you?
make install is not used as then files conflicting with glibc would need to be removed.
Do you have examples of applications that are broken because of the absence of this file?
Comment by Paul Ganssle (pganssle) - Monday, 23 July 2018, 18:56 GMT
@loqs I am not particularly familiar with how arch installations work to actually test this, but I believe that that should fix the issue, yes. Thanks for putting the patch together.

I don't know of any examples where the lack of tzdata.zi would break things, but it is a relatively recent file that is not yet commonly deployed, so it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. I consume tzdata as part of Python's dateutil module and would like to add support for querying the system version. A tzdata.zi-based approach will only work on OSes where tzdata.zi is deployed (and I use Arch, so selfishly I want my own software to work on my computer :P).
Comment by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Thursday, 09 August 2018, 20:02 GMT
We don't duplicate tzcode stuff that gets every now and then updated into glibc. e.g. https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=commit&s=zic

I guess you should ask Paul Eggert to bring it to glibc as well if something starts to depend on it.
Comment by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Thursday, 09 August 2018, 20:26 GMT
If we decide to ship the new files in tzdata pkg we should also install leapsecond file.

https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/939d7647c18036a4f22c468b9b57ed4b970dca6e

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