Hi, On Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:49:12 -0700, "Chris Lamb" <[email protected]> wrote: > Andrea Pappacoda wrote: > > I also looked up some info in the POSIX standard, and I found this at > > <https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html>, > > where it basically says that the TZ format should be > > Ooh, thanks! Super helpful, and this motivated me to update the official > Reproducible Builds documentation, basically paraphrasing what you wrote: > > > https://salsa.debian.org/reproducible-builds/reproducible-website/commit/adf38b870244e4cc9bed50c1b5c70a7a647ac66a > > > Thanks to you for reporting the bug in the first place! > > No problem. :)
Regarding the latter, TZ=UTC isn’t “technically invalid”. POSIX allows three formats for TZ values: * :characters * std offset dst offset, rule * “a format specifying a geographical timezone or a special timezone” UTC0 matches the second one. UTC matches the third, and is perfectly valid. The main benefit of UTC0 is that it is fully specified in POSIX; on any POSIX-compliant system, TZ=UTC0 will mean the same thing. TZ=UTC relies on the implementation; typically it would use the IANA database (which is mentioned in POSIX), but there’s nothing stopping an implementation from interpreting TZ=UTC as the timezone of a putative “United Transcendental Countries” for example. Regards, Stephen
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