[Evolution] Bug#416067: Evolution's time zone files aren't updated for recent DST changes

[Mike Hicks]

Package: evolution-data-server-common
Version: 1.6.3-4

I noticed last night that an alert I have set to go off at 10PM went of
at 11PM instead.  I looked at my calendar in Evolution and saw that the
red line indicating the current time was an hour earlier than the time
everywhere else on my system.  I live in the U.S. central time zone,
which is represented as  "US/Central", "America/Chicago" (among others),
and "CST6CDT" in regular zoneinfo file distributions.

The rules for which day each year daylight saving time is activated were
changed about a year ago for my region, and the changes became effective
this month.

I shortly tracked down my problem to be an outdated vCalendar
file: /usr/share/evolution-data-server-1.6/zoneinfo/America/Chicago.ics

        BEGIN:VCALENDAR
        PRODID:-//Ximian//NONSGML Evolution Olson-VTIMEZONE
        Converter//EN
        VERSION:2.0
        BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
        TZID:/softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/America/Chicago
        X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Chicago
        BEGIN:STANDARD
        TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
        TZOFFSETTO:-0600
        TZNAME:CST
        DTSTART:19701025T020000
        RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU
        END:STANDARD
        BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
        TZOFFSETFROM:-0600
        TZOFFSETTO:-0500
        TZNAME:CDT
        DTSTART:19700405T020000
        RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=4;BYDAY=1SU
        END:DAYLIGHT
        END:VTIMEZONE
        END:VCALENDAR

As a quick fix, I modified the RRULE lines so they read, respectively:

        RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU

and

        RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU

Of course, this could screw up looking back in time to previous years,
though I'm not sure how critical that is for the Evolution calendar.  If
vCalendar files can represent the history of time zone changes as well
as regular zoneinfo files can, I'd like to see historical info in there
too.  That'd help with future changes too, so then a file containing
info on when the future change takes effect could be distributed almost
as soon as the law gets passed.

Of course, I'd *really* prefer if the calendar just used the system's
time zone settings, or at least had a way to use the existing system
zoneinfo files as templates to recreate the vCalendar time zone files
used by Evolution whenever it's necessary.



Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                           Version        Description
+++-==============================-==============-==============================================
ii  evolution                      2.6.3-6        groupware suite with mail client and organizer
ii  evolution-common               2.6.3-6        architecture independent files for Evolution
ii  evolution-data-server          1.6.3-4        evolution database backend server
ii  evolution-data-server-common   1.6.3-4        architecture independent files for Evolution D
ii  evolution-plugins              2.6.3-6        standard plugins for Evolution

-- 
Mike Hicks <hick0088 at tc.umn.edu>
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