RFR: 8345213: JVM Prefers /etc/timezone Over /etc/localtime on Debian 12

[Naoto Sato]

On Tue, 25 Feb 2025 17:11:18 GMT, Naoto Sato <naoto at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> Hello Naoto, this looks reasonable to me. Do you think we should add a release note for this change?
>
>> Hello Naoto, this looks reasonable to me. Do you think we should add a release note for this change?
> 
> Good point. I will draft a release note for this change.

> @naotoj Do you know what was the last Debian release where this file was used? I'm looking at JDK-6456628 to try to understand if any of the distros from that needed this code have any supported releases that might need it.

Here is a quote from this Debian bug report: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=822733


This now leaves /etc/timezone completely redundant, as you should get
exactly the same answer by readlink /etc/localtime -- and if you do
not get the same answer, you have an inconsistency. /etc/localtime
obviously "wins" for the actual clock (as that's what programs are
reading), but you presumably get the /etc/timezone value in some
"system configuration tool" packages which read /etc/timezone first.


This seems to imply that as of 2016, /etc/timezone is a redundant file. Our supported Debian distros (as of JDK23) are Ubuntu 24.04LTS and 24.10, so I think we are OK just remove the support for /etc/timezone

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/23755#issuecomment-2682711288