Bug 949812 – sys-libs/timezone-data: remove /etc/timezone?

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Michał Górny 2025-02-15 16:38:40 UTC]

Apparently Debian has deprecated /etc/timezone, as timedatectl isn't updating it:

https://salsa.debian.org/glibc-team/tzdata/-/commit/c071fbc167ad306394b576879d515e6ecbe5a734

I suppose we should also look into removing the file, as random tools want to wrongly depend on it being correct.  In fact, libcxx is considering starting to rely on that file right now [1], so better get rid of it before more people make the mistake.

[1] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/105634#issuecomment-2660976683

[Comment 1 Mike Gilbert 2025-02-16 01:35:03 UTC]

The ebuild already removes /etc/timezone when creating /etc/localtime as a symlink. We don't remove it if /etc/localtime exists as a regular file.

I think the next logical step would be to forcibly convert /etc/localtime from a regular file to a symlink when timezone-data is upgraded.

[Comment 2 Michał Górny 2025-02-16 02:44:28 UTC]

Perhaps it should also remove it (or at least verbosely warn about it) when /etc/localtime is a symlink already.

[Comment 3 Larry the Git Cow 2025-02-17 21:26:08 UTC]

The bug has been closed via the following commit(s):

https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=311832fc268b9b62bd996fafdcbde0eafd3ab817

commit 311832fc268b9b62bd996fafdcbde0eafd3ab817
Author:     Mike Gilbert <[e-mail]>
AuthorDate: 2025-02-17 02:02:24 +0000
Commit:     Mike Gilbert <[e-mail]>
CommitDate: 2025-02-17 21:24:07 +0000

    sys-libs/timezone-data: remove /etc/timezone if localtime is a symlink
    
    Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/949812
    Signed-off-by: Mike Gilbert <[e-mail]>

 sys-libs/timezone-data/timezone-data-2025a.ebuild | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)