#389 GMT±XX timezones

Stuart Longland Tue 3 May 2016

Hi all,

An interesting situation cropped up. Seems in one system, someone configured a point as timezone "GMT+10" to get Brisbane time (just in case some foolish government introduces DST like they trialled in the 90's).

The Olson database defines a number of timezones that match the GMT±XX name pattern, and the sign convention is opposite to that of normal UTC conventions:

RC=0 stuartl@rikishi ~ $ TZ=Etc/GMT+10 date
Tue May  3 13:41:23 GMT+10 2016
RC=0 stuartl@rikishi ~ $ TZ=Etc/GMT-10 date
Wed May  4 09:41:27 GMT-10 2016
RC=0 stuartl@rikishi ~ $ TZ=Etc/GMT date
Tue May  3 23:41:36 GMT 2016
RC=0 stuartl@rikishi ~ $ TZ=Australia/Brisbane date
Wed May  4 09:41:44 AEST 2016

Is Project Haystack meant to follow these same conventions, or are we going to "fix" it?

Brian Frank Tue 3 May 2016

We follow the Olson database exactly - in fact we generate our database straight from the Olson database on a periodic basis. The GMT names are indeed extremely confusing - not sure why they did that

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