On 2023-04-21 06:32, Benjamin Drung via tz wrote:
What do you think about the idea of introducing Etc/UTC+x timezones that have the "correct" offset so that people can select fixed offsets more easily?
Wouldn't this introduce confusion? Etc/UTC+2 would mean the opposite of Etc/GMT+2. We can't get rid of the latter name, due to backward compatibility. Furthermore, Etc/UTC+2 would magnify Etc/GMT+2's problem, in that it would tempt people into writing TZ='UTC+2' which is just wrong. The bug reports you cited don't seem to be instances of user confusion with tzdata, only of frustration that dpkg-reconfigure presents these wrong-signed names to the user. However, those names are meant for internal use, just as the other Zone names are. So the real bug here seems to be with dpkg-reconfigure, not with tzdata. In contrast, tzselect gets this right: it does not expose names like Etc/GMT+2 to the user.