[tz] OpenJDK/CLDR/ICU/Joda issues with Ireland change

Robert Elz kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Fri Jan 26 17:18:52 UTC 2018


  From: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
  Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 07:39:30 -0800
  Subject: Re: [tz] OpenJDK/CLDR/ICU/Joda issues with Ireland change

  | Unfortunately tm_gmtoff is not standardized by C or POSIX, perhaps
  | because standardizers mistakenly thought that strftime %z was enough.

No, it would have been because tm_gmtoff isn't available everywhere
(and most particularly, wasn't available on the main reference system
from which most of POSIX was copied.)

Standards groups should (and the posix people mostly do) specify what
users can expect to have work, and how to make that happen.  When
things only work, or can only be used, sometimes, that's not suitable
to be standardised.

It is possible that after all of this time, enough of the world that
matters has tm_gmtoff (and tm_zone) that POSIX may be persuaded to
add them - but at best that could not happen until the next major
revision, which is years away if I read the signs correctly.  They
could indicate that it will happen though (which also would give
those implementations which still don't support those fields time to
catch up.)

I paricipate (a bit - mostly wrt the shell definition) in the group
that does the work, I will (in a week or two, when I have systems
back working that allow me to do it rationally) file a bug report
with them, and see what happens (it is likely to garner some
immediate reaction, but will take more than a year to reach the head
of the queue and actually get some possible action, one way or
the other).

kre

ps: I know that posix has not been immune from the need to invent,
but they are better than many others in that regard.  It is also
possible that this may be regarded as more a C issue, and best
deferred to them, in which case someone else would need to learn
how to see if any action can be started there.


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