<i18n dev> Additional source to guess the local timezone ID on linux

[Masayoshi Okutsu]

Hi Omair,

/etc/sysconfig/clock used to be supported, but it was removed in JDK 7. 
The problem is discussed in bug #6456628.

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6456628

Have you tested your fix on all Red Hat-like distros, including some 
older releases, with all the time zone IDs?

Thanks,
Masayoshi

On 8/26/2013 5:40 PM, Alan Bateman wrote:
>
> Including i18n-dev on this discussion because that is where this code 
> is maintained.
>
>
> On 23/08/2013 22:09, Omair Majid wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The algorithm that OpenJDK uses to guess the local timezone ID on Linux
>> goes like this:
>>
>> 1. If TZ environment variable is set, use that
>> 2. If /etc/timezone is readable, read the time zone from there
>> 3. If /etc/localtime is a symlink, resolve that, and use the name to
>> guess the time zone.
>> 4. Scan /usr/share/zoneinfo for a file whose contents match the contents
>> of /etc/localtime.
>>
>> Step 4 (if it is ever reached) is probably going to lead to incorrect
>> results since there are a number of timezones that have the same
>> zoneinfo data (such as Europe/London and Europe/Belfast). So it seems
>> sensible to me to try and use additional sources to guess the timezone
>> ID before resorting to file content comparisons.
>>
>> The webrev adds a step between 2 and 3 that reads and parses
>> /etc/sysconfig/clock to extract the timezone:
>>
>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~omajid/webrevs/timezone-read-sysconfig-clock/00/ 
>>
>>
>> This file exists on some Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and derivative)
>> distributions and contains contents that look this:
>>
>>> # The time zone of the system is defined by the contents of 
>>> /etc/localtime.
>>> # This file is only for evaluation by system-config-date, do not 
>>> rely on its
>>> # contents elsewhere.
>>> ZONE="Europe/Zurich"
>> With this, we should be able to identify the exact timezone ID.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Omair
>