Updating Zoneinfo Data

Programmer Reference : Time Zones : Updating Zoneinfo Data

Zoneinfo is periodically updated on UNIX through operating system updates. Instantiations will ship the latest zoneinfo data on Windows with each release. If there is a change in zoneinfo which is needed before the next release of VA Smalltalk, it is possible to build an updated zoneinfo from the IANA data.

The easiest way to do this is on Linux. The zoneinfo data generated is binary and compatible across platforms. This example was done in a Fedora terminal.

• run 'ftp ftp.iana.org'

• user is anonymous and password is your email address

• 'cd tz'

• 'get tzdata-latest.tar.gz'

• 'get tzcode-latest.tar.gz'

• 'quit' ftp

• create a temporary time zone directory, e.g., /tmp/tz which we will call TopDir

• move both *.gz files to TopDir

• change to TopDir

• run 'tar -xzvf tzdata-latest.tar.gz'

• run 'tar -xzvf tzcode-latest.tar.gz'

• do 'chmod 666 Makefile' to make it read/write.

• edit Makefile and change the line (approximately number 40) from 'TOPDIR= /usr/local' to 'TOPDIR= /tmp/tz'

• save Makefile

• run 'make posix_only' This will create $TopDir/etc/zoneinfo which is the new zoneinfo data.

• There is no way to determine the zoneinfo version from zoneinfo data, so we suggest that you also create a file called version.txt in zoneinfo with content like this (get the version info from the Iana page):

Time Zone Data v. 2012c (Released 2012-03-27)

Last modified date: 01/29/2015