1README for the tz distribution 2 3"What time is it?" -- Richard Deacon as The King 4"Any time you want it to be." -- Frank Baxter as The Scientist 5 (from the Bell System film "About Time") 6 7The Time Zone Database (often called tz or zoneinfo) contains code and 8data that represent the history of local time for many representative 9locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect 10changes made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets, 11and daylight-saving rules. 12 13Here is a recipe for acquiring, building, installing, and testing the 14tz distribution on a GNU/Linux or similar host. 15 16To acquire the distribution, run the following shell commands: 17 18 mkdir tz 19 cd tz 20 wget --retr-symlinks 'ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tz*-latest.tar.gz' 21 gzip -dc tzcode-latest.tar.gz | tar -xf - 22 gzip -dc tzdata-latest.tar.gz | tar -xf - 23 24Alternatively, the following shell commands acquire the same 25distribution, with extra data useful for regression testing: 26 27 wget --retr-symlinks 'ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzdb-latest.tar.lz' 28 lzip -dc tzdb-latest.tar.lz | tar -xf - 29 30Be sure to read the comments in "Makefile" and make any changes needed 31to make things right for your system, especially if you are using some 32platform other than GNU/Linux. Then run the following commands, 33substituting your desired installation directory for "$HOME/tzdir": 34 35 make TOPDIR=$HOME/tzdir install 36 $HOME/tzdir/etc/zdump -v America/Los_Angeles 37 38Historical local time information has been included here to: 39 40* provide a compendium of data about the history of civil time 41 that is useful even if not 100% accurate; 42 43* give an idea of the variety of local time rules that have 44 existed in the past and thus an idea of the variety that may be 45 expected in the future; 46 47* provide a test of the generality of the local time rule description 48 system. 49 50The information in the time zone data files is by no means authoritative; 51fixes and enhancements are welcome. Please see the file CONTRIBUTING 52for details. 53 54Thanks to these Time Zone Caballeros who've made major contributions to the 55time conversion package: Keith Bostic; Bob Devine; Paul Eggert; Robert Elz; 56Guy Harris; Mark Horton; John Mackin; and Bradley White. Thanks also to 57Michael Bloom, Art Neilson, Stephen Prince, John Sovereign, and Frank Wales 58for testing work, and to Gwillim Law for checking local mean time data. 59Thanks in particular to Arthur David Olson, the project's founder and first 60maintainer, to whom the time zone community owes the greatest debt of all. 61None of them are responsible for remaining errors. 62 63Look in <ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/> for updated versions of these files. 64 65Please send comments or information to tz@iana.org. 66 67----- 68 69This file is in the public domain, so clarified as of 2009-05-17 by 70Arthur David Olson. The other files in this distribution are either 71public domain or BSD licensed; see the file LICENSE for details. 72