Re: [PATCH] Fix: wrong offset for CET timezone

From: Alan Franzoni <mailing@franzoni.eu>
Date: Jun 27, 2014, 08:24 UTC
Message-ID: <CAF3z5=m5Ac5qWuXNXZaRqfDjbmt37qHjbj6YxkaE12VYsZegcg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <166360487.125996.1403820532765.JavaMail.zimbra@dewire.com>

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 12:08 AM, Robin Rosenberg <robin.rosenberg@dewire.com> wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> 1 hour in winter and 2 in summer, although some standards seem to say
> that summer time is really called CEST, computers apply DST to CET in summer.
>
> $ TZ=UTC date
> Tor 26 Jun 2014 22:08:01 UTC
>
> $ TZ=CET date
> Fre 27 Jun 2014 00:08:05 CEST

Like Andreas pointed out, this seems an implementation detail. CET is still +1, while CEST is +2.

If you take a look at the official IANA tzdata:

http://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2014e.tar.gz

For europe, it's something like "std: CET" and "dst: CEST".

The current doc is not correct either; we should write something like "either +1 or +2 depending on DST" (there seems to be a 2dst as well which gets +3 offset);

Usually the best way of handling timezones is to use the proper location format (e.g. TZ='Europe/Rome') and then letting the system pick the proper offset; we might say something like ' "Europe/Rome" which is +1 in winter ' in the doc, but I'd say that's nitpicking.

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