zoneinfo and zoneinfo-global resources

[Iskander Akishev]

Hi,

Apparently there are two sets of timezone definitions included into the icaj4j library: zoneinfo and zoneinfo-global. It seems like zoneinfo is the one used by default.

Does anyone happen to know why there are two and what the conceptual difference between the two is?

Thanks!

[Ben Fortuna]

Hi Iskander,

Thanks for raising this question. The original intent of zoneinfo-global was to provide a globally unique identifier for timezones that are included in generated calendar object files. This was to ensure they were truly portable and would operate consistently in any CUA (i.e. without providing timezone definitions a calendar object is subject to the timezones provided by the CUA, which can vary).

More info on this in the wiki:

https://github.com/ical4j/ical4j/wiki/Timezones#zoneinfo

Unfortunately the distinction to make them globally unique has been lost at some point, so they currently don't differ at all from the default definitions. I guess no-one is really using them, but I'll fix the issue anyway just in case they are required in future.

regards,
ben