[tz] [PATCH 1/1] Add UTC to zone tables

[Guy Harris]

On Mar 12, 2016, at 5:02 PM, J William Piggott <elseifthen at gmx.com> wrote:

> On 03/10/2016 06:21 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
>> On 03/10/2016 02:04 PM, J William Piggott wrote:
>>> Should there be a zone table (tzselect) entry for UTC?
>> 
>> One can use tzselect to choose UTC already, no? Something like the following.
> 
> You cannot set /etc/localtime to a posix TZ string.

And you cannot use tzselect to set /etc/localtime to anything; what tzselect does is tell you how to set the TZ environment variable to have UTC converted in the way you specify.  Whether you use its output to set the TZ environment variable, or to pick the name of a file to which to link /etc/localtime, is up to the you.

> The Theory file says that tzselect, and applications like it that use
> the zone tables, are to assist a layperson it selecting a time zone
> _file_ from the database of _files_.

What it says is

> Each of the database's time zone rules has a unique name.
> Inexperienced users are not expected to select these names unaided.
> Distributors should provide documentation and/or a simple selection
> interface that explains the names; for one example, see the 'tzselect'
> program in the tz code.  The Unicode Common Locale Data Repository
> <http://cldr.unicode.org/> contains data that may be useful for other
> selection interfaces.

and that is, in fact, *one* of the things that tzselect can do.  It's not the *only* thing it can do.