Re: Daylight Saving Time question PostgreSQL 8.1.4

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 12:20:25PM -0400, Michael Ledford wrote:
> It appears that we didn't do enough research in regards to the recent
> DST switch. We poorly assumed that having our machine's timezone files
> up to date would be sufficient not knowing that our version of
> postgres relied on its own timezone files.

You're obviously in a country that doesn't change the rules very often
or you'd have expected it :)

> The question is... can we symlink the share/postgresql/timezone/
> directory to our OS X /usr/share/zoneinfo to without fear of breaking
> anything in the future?

Well, maybe. You see, until recently the zoneinfo files had a single
format so you could just symlink them. For example, Redhat RPM's did
this IIRC. Symlinking was safe.

However, upstream zoneinfo file had a slight format change making them
incompatable, so I can't say with absolute certainty it will work and
stay working. But it can work, people have done it, just test it, and
be prepared to revert after a system upgrade (in case your system's
version changes format).

> I'm also curious about the rationale to maintain a separate timezone
> data files for machines that supply them.

Not all machines have them. Can you be sure of the format? Do you have
permission to open the files directly. Or the biggest issue: can you
tell at compile time where the timezone files will be at runtime.

Good luck.

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to litigate.