Re: Can't set the timezone for "date".

[Brian Dessent]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> I think it would be helpful if the manual said something like this.  Even
> coreutils.info just says (in a fairly buried place) "Normally, `date'
> operates in the time zone indicated by `TZ', or the system default if
> `TZ' is not set", without giving any indication of exactly how $TZ
> indicates.  I found this unhelpful and frustrating.

The coreutils info page can't just say "run tzconfig" because that only
applies to glibc systems, whereas coreutils is used on many other
platforms as well -- and they all have different ways of setting the
system time zone.  Welcome to portable software, where documenting
anything system-specific in a generic way is difficult if not
impossible, unless you want to resort to a long list of "On Linux, do
this; On Solaris, do this; On IRIX, do this; On HP-UX, do this; On
Darwin, do this; On FreeBSD, do this; On Windows, do this."

Brian