[tz] IANA timezone database - request to add Omaha, Nebraska

[Florian Weimer]

* Guy Harris:

> On Jul 22, 2022, at 12:55 AM, Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>> * Guy Harris via tz:
>> 
>>> However, once the city was selected, the "Date & Time" setting appears
>>> to have forgotten the city I chose; it reports Los Angeles, instead.
>>> Strike 1.
>> 
>> This is because the system necessarily has to use the IANA tz identifier
>> internally for compatibility purposes (e.g., across container
>> boundaries, or for other system configuration tools).
>
> That is only true if the system necessarily has to use *ONLY* the IANA
> tz identifier and *CANNOT* store the selected city name.

It's necessary to use an identifier from a coordinated namespace for
interoperability purposes.  Boundaries between operating systems from
different vendors are eroding, so this isn't just about a single system
that needs to be compatible with itself.  There is also the matter that
people rewrite the system time zone facilities and go straight to file
system paths, or use network services to augment the system time zone
data.  All this requires interoperable identifiers.  And right now the
IANA identifiers are the cheapest option, and it's also widely used.

Of course, it's possible to hide these identifiers pretty well if you
only access 

>
> I am typing this email on a system that has, for what it's worth,
> passed the Single UNIX Specification test suite and gotten certified
> as UNIX 03:
>
> 	https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3663.htm
>
> and *its* time does *NOT* show me as being in Los Angeles.
>
> This is presumably because, although it "uses the IANA tz identifier internally" in this sense:
>
> 	$ echo $TZ
>
> 	$ ls -l /etc/localtime
> 	lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  45 Jul 21 19:12 /etc/localtime -> /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles
>
> (it does *NOT* set TZ, it just symlinks /etc/localtime to the
> appropriate tzdb file), it does *NOT* restrict itself to doing a
> readlink() of /etc/localtime to determine what to display as the
> current time zone setting; it, apparently, remembers what city you set
> as the "closest city" and displays that.

How does this system implement a programming interface that enumerates
the TZ rules?  The typical way is to use readlink to get the IANA
identifier, and then use that to look up the rules in the zic input file
(because the compiled blobs lack this information).

Thanks,
Florian