Message-ID: <d51522f0-c122-4dda-b787-62c376895fdc@technowledgy.de>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 08:39:53 +0200
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
From: Wolfgang Walther <walther@technowledgy.de>
Subject: Re: Regression tests fail with tzdata 2024b
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Sven Klemm <sven@timescale.com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
References: <0a997455-5aba-4cf2-a354-d26d8bcbfae6@technowledgy.de>
 <441306.1726346239@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <38e73fef-f19b-4835-b353-a110db6c8318@technowledgy.de>
 <1043017.1726463364@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <CAMCrgp1W7DWBNA4GQCKBPyUS7nV15j_8kedkBWX2ud6w1n06Yw@mail.gmail.com>
 <1156795.1726499982@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <CAMCrgp3vqoUKgLk2nshO-po-s26gEPWXT0wxjOkbrNqQ6TwAaA@mail.gmail.com>
 <1399310.1726551755@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Content-Language: en-US
In-Reply-To: <1399310.1726551755@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Archived-At: <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/d51522f0-c122-4dda-b787-62c376895fdc%40technowledgy.de>
Precedence: bulk

Tom Lane:
>> I was wondering whether the timezone used by pg_regress could be made
>> configurable.
> 
> Yes, I understood that you were suggesting that.  My point is that
> it wouldn't do you any good: you will still have to change any
> regression test cases that depend on behavior PST8PDT has/had that
> is different from America/Los_Angeles.  That being the case,
> I don't see much value in making it configurable.

Just changing it back to PST8PDT wouldn't really help as Tom pointed 
out. You'd still get different results depending on which tzdata version 
you are running with.

The core regression tests need to be run with a timezone that tests 
special cases in the timezone handling code. But that might not be true 
for extensions - all they want could be a stable output across major and 
minor versions of postgres and versions of tzdata. It could be helpful 
to set pg_regress' timezone to UTC, for example?

Best,

Wolfgang