Re: Default timezone changes in 9.1

Terence Ferraro <terencejferraro(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Post 9.1, the system determines this via initdb data directory
> initialization and automatically sets it within postgresql.conf.
> In other words, the default now is *not* GMT but rather the system detected
> timezone at initdb runtime. Removing that statically set configuration
> option, in this case, *then* assumes GMT.

This argument is nonsense. If you want GMT, why don't you just let
initdb set it that way? It should work to set TZ=GMT in its
environment for instance.

There were a couple reasons why we made that change:
* it's fairly expensive to infer the system timezone, and people
complained about the cost of doing so on every postmaster start.
* it made timezone work more like the locale settings, which have
always been set at initdb time.

So we're not going to be reverting the change, but I am curious to find
out why you find it so important as to be willing to run a modified
version that does this the old way.

regards, tom lane