README revision 309583
1309583SglebiusREADME for the tz distribution 2309583Sglebius 3309583Sglebius"What time is it?" -- Richard Deacon as The King 4309583Sglebius"Any time you want it to be." -- Frank Baxter as The Scientist 5309583Sglebius (from the Bell System film "About Time") 6309583Sglebius 7309583SglebiusThe Time Zone Database (often called tz or zoneinfo) contains code and 8309583Sglebiusdata that represent the history of local time for many representative 9309583Sglebiuslocations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect 10309583Sglebiuschanges made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets, 11309583Sglebiusand daylight-saving rules. 12309583Sglebius 13309583SglebiusHere is a recipe for acquiring, building, installing, and testing the 14309583Sglebiustz distribution on a GNU/Linux or similar host. 15309583Sglebius 16309583SglebiusTo acquire the distribution, run the following shell commands: 17309583Sglebius 18309583Sglebius mkdir tz 19309583Sglebius cd tz 20309583Sglebius wget --retr-symlinks 'ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tz*-latest.tar.gz' 21309583Sglebius gzip -dc tzcode-latest.tar.gz | tar -xf - 22309583Sglebius gzip -dc tzdata-latest.tar.gz | tar -xf - 23309583Sglebius 24309583SglebiusAlternatively, the following shell commands acquire the same 25309583Sglebiusdistribution, with extra data useful for regression testing: 26309583Sglebius 27309583Sglebius wget --retr-symlinks 'ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzdb-latest.tar.lz' 28309583Sglebius lzip -dc tzdb-latest.tar.lz | tar -xf - 29309583Sglebius 30309583SglebiusBe sure to read the comments in "Makefile" and make any changes needed 31309583Sglebiusto make things right for your system, especially if you are using some 32309583Sglebiusplatform other than GNU/Linux. Then run the following commands, 33309583Sglebiussubstituting your desired installation directory for "$HOME/tzdir": 34309583Sglebius 35309583Sglebius make TOPDIR=$HOME/tzdir install 36309583Sglebius $HOME/tzdir/etc/zdump -v America/Los_Angeles 37309583Sglebius 38309583SglebiusHistorical local time information has been included here to: 39309583Sglebius 40309583Sglebius* provide a compendium of data about the history of civil time 41309583Sglebius that is useful even if not 100% accurate; 42309583Sglebius 43309583Sglebius* give an idea of the variety of local time rules that have 44309583Sglebius existed in the past and thus an idea of the variety that may be 45309583Sglebius expected in the future; 46309583Sglebius 47309583Sglebius* provide a test of the generality of the local time rule description 48309583Sglebius system. 49309583Sglebius 50309583SglebiusThe information in the time zone data files is by no means authoritative; 51309583Sglebiusfixes and enhancements are welcome. Please see the file CONTRIBUTING 52309583Sglebiusfor details. 53309583Sglebius 54309583SglebiusThanks to these Time Zone Caballeros who've made major contributions to the 55309583Sglebiustime conversion package: Keith Bostic; Bob Devine; Paul Eggert; Robert Elz; 56309583SglebiusGuy Harris; Mark Horton; John Mackin; and Bradley White. Thanks also to 57309583SglebiusMichael Bloom, Art Neilson, Stephen Prince, John Sovereign, and Frank Wales 58309583Sglebiusfor testing work, and to Gwillim Law for checking local mean time data. 59309583SglebiusThanks in particular to Arthur David Olson, the project's founder and first 60309583Sglebiusmaintainer, to whom the time zone community owes the greatest debt of all. 61309583SglebiusNone of them are responsible for remaining errors. 62309583Sglebius 63309583SglebiusLook in <ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/> for updated versions of these files. 64309583Sglebius 65309583SglebiusPlease send comments or information to tz@iana.org. 66309583Sglebius 67309583Sglebius----- 68309583Sglebius 69309583SglebiusThis file is in the public domain, so clarified as of 2009-05-17 by 70309583SglebiusArthur David Olson. The other files in this distribution are either 71309583Sglebiuspublic domain or BSD licensed; see the file LICENSE for details. 72