Re: Timezone: resolve $TZDIR in runtime

Anatolii Smolianinov <zarkonesmall(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> I was recently working with a project which embeds postgres into
> application. It uses binaries built for Debian, and configured to look for
> timezones in Debian's timezone folder /usr/share/zoneinfo/, which wasn't
> present on my system.

Why are you trying to use binaries built for Debian on some other
platform? Seems like there'd be more problems than just timezones.

> I was thinking if it's possible to redefine it in runtime, and found that
> it is not possible: postgres support either compilation flag
> --with-system-tzdata or built-in tz file -- timezone/data/tzdata.zi. From
> the other hand, looking at src/timezone/pgtz.c#L54, it seems that timezone
> dir resolve happens in runtime, which means, it is possible to use $TZDIR
> environment variable or configuration option to achieve this without
> recompilation.

I'm pretty down on this idea because it adds complexity, ie ways to
break things. If you want a more self-contained installation, you
could build it without specifying --with-system-tzdata.

regards, tom lane