1309576SglebiusREADME for the tz distribution
2309576Sglebius
3309576Sglebius"What time is it?" -- Richard Deacon as The King
4309576Sglebius"Any time you want it to be." -- Frank Baxter as The Scientist
5309576Sglebius					(from the Bell System film "About Time")
6309576Sglebius
7309576SglebiusThe Time Zone Database (often called tz or zoneinfo) contains code and
8309576Sglebiusdata that represent the history of local time for many representative
9309576Sglebiuslocations around the globe.  It is updated periodically to reflect
10309576Sglebiuschanges made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets,
11309576Sglebiusand daylight-saving rules.
12309576Sglebius
13309576SglebiusHere is a recipe for acquiring, building, installing, and testing the
14309576Sglebiustz distribution on a GNU/Linux or similar host.
15309576Sglebius
16309576SglebiusTo acquire the distribution, run the following shell commands:
17309576Sglebius
18309576Sglebius	mkdir tz
19309576Sglebius	cd tz
20309576Sglebius	wget --retr-symlinks 'ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tz*-latest.tar.gz'
21309576Sglebius	gzip -dc tzcode-latest.tar.gz | tar -xf -
22309576Sglebius	gzip -dc tzdata-latest.tar.gz | tar -xf -
23309576Sglebius
24309576SglebiusAlternatively, the following shell commands acquire the same
25309576Sglebiusdistribution, with extra data useful for regression testing:
26309576Sglebius
27309576Sglebius	wget --retr-symlinks 'ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzdb-latest.tar.lz'
28309576Sglebius	lzip -dc tzdb-latest.tar.lz | tar -xf -
29309576Sglebius
30309576SglebiusBe sure to read the comments in "Makefile" and make any changes needed
31309576Sglebiusto make things right for your system, especially if you are using some
32309576Sglebiusplatform other than GNU/Linux.  Then run the following commands,
33309576Sglebiussubstituting your desired installation directory for "$HOME/tzdir":
34309576Sglebius
35309576Sglebius	make TOPDIR=$HOME/tzdir install
36309576Sglebius	$HOME/tzdir/etc/zdump -v America/Los_Angeles
37309576Sglebius
38309576SglebiusHistorical local time information has been included here to:
39309576Sglebius
40309576Sglebius*	provide a compendium of data about the history of civil time
41309576Sglebius	that is useful even if not 100% accurate;
42309576Sglebius
43309576Sglebius*	give an idea of the variety of local time rules that have
44309576Sglebius	existed in the past and thus an idea of the variety that may be
45309576Sglebius	expected in the future;
46309576Sglebius
47309576Sglebius*	provide a test of the generality of the local time rule description
48309576Sglebius	system.
49309576Sglebius
50309576SglebiusThe information in the time zone data files is by no means authoritative;
51309576Sglebiusfixes and enhancements are welcome.  Please see the file CONTRIBUTING
52309576Sglebiusfor details.
53309576Sglebius
54309576SglebiusThanks to these Time Zone Caballeros who've made major contributions to the
55309576Sglebiustime conversion package: Keith Bostic; Bob Devine; Paul Eggert; Robert Elz;
56309576SglebiusGuy Harris; Mark Horton; John Mackin; and Bradley White.  Thanks also to
57309576SglebiusMichael Bloom, Art Neilson, Stephen Prince, John Sovereign, and Frank Wales
58309576Sglebiusfor testing work, and to Gwillim Law for checking local mean time data.
59309576SglebiusThanks in particular to Arthur David Olson, the project's founder and first
60309576Sglebiusmaintainer, to whom the time zone community owes the greatest debt of all.
61309576SglebiusNone of them are responsible for remaining errors.
62309576Sglebius
63309576SglebiusLook in <ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/> for updated versions of these files.
64309576Sglebius
65309576SglebiusPlease send comments or information to tz@iana.org.
66309576Sglebius
67309576Sglebius-----
68309576Sglebius
69309576SglebiusThis file is in the public domain, so clarified as of 2009-05-17 by
70309576SglebiusArthur David Olson.  The other files in this distribution are either
71309576Sglebiuspublic domain or BSD licensed; see the file LICENSE for details.
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