[erlang-questions] Setting TZ variable

[Kenji Rikitake]

And remember we've already got another PITA called the leap seconds.
(Note: POSIX intentionally *ignores* the leap seconds at all.
 Fortunately this has been properly handed in Erlang since R14B.)

Kenji Rikitake
still running my FreeBSD servers with djb's libtai

In the message <0004061E-6A2D-4A0E-9495-8E22F1778610@REDACTED>
dated Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 08:28:55AM +0100,
Ulf Wiger <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> writes:
> So, the original advice came from the AXD 301 days, where we had to deal
> with timezone and DST issues in a non-stop system. Running on Solaris,
> at the time, updating the zoneinfo files was an OS patch each time, and there
> were ca 200 different settings. Timezone is relatively straightforward - at least
> the AXD 301 tended not to move once brought into service, but DST is really
> a PITA; some countries decide through parlamentary decision when it's 
> supposed to happen each year, and others have different rules for years 
> with presidential elections…
> 
> Also, we needed to get the time representation in logs correct (i.e. correct
> localtime) - not just the time presented in the GUI.
> 
> Granted, it was early days for OTP, so some of our issues have long-since
> been fixed. Initially, there was no erlang:universaltime(), and if the OS time
> changed to DST, this would affect erlang:now() and all timers in the system, 
> so we set the system clock to UST and tweaked the TZ variable from within Erlang.
> 
> BR,
> Ulf W