[kde-linux] KF5 TimeZone problem

[Duncan]

James Tyrer posted on Tue, 05 Apr 2016 11:06:08 -0700 as excerpted:

> When I start the KDE4 desktop with available applications replaced with
> KF5 ones (including KDE PIM), I get this error box [attached].
> 
> I see discussion about this on the web but no real conclusion of what
> the problem is or how to fix it.

The dialog says:

Time zones are not accessible:
KAlarm will use the UTC time zone.

(The KDE time zone service is not available:
check that ktimezoned is installed.)



I don't use anything kdepim related at all, as I found alternatives when 
they jumped the akonadi shark.

However!

For the components of KF5/Plasma5/KA5 I am running, including the plasma 
desktop, I'm actually running live-git versions now, directly following 
upstream development.  Gentoo has a package that installs a script that 
can be run to check what live packages actually have upstream updates, 
such that it updates them only, skipping the live packages that haven't 
had any new commits since the last run.  That makes it far easier to run 
live versions, and I take full advantage of it for kde and friends. =:^)

And, after it checks for updates and starts rebuilding any live packages 
with updates, in another konsole window, for each updating live package, 
I run my own script that effectively does a git log ORIG_HEAD.., telling 
me what new commits there are, what the commit comment was for each, and 
what files changed.  Then for any real interesting commits I can invoke 
the same script in a slightly different way, feeding it the commit hash, 
to effectively do a git show <commit> and get the full commit diff.  Tho 
I don't often find a commit interesting enough to do that, occasionally I 
will.

With that background...

One of the very recent commits, only perhaps three days old at the oldest 
(I updated last nite, from only a few days previous, and the commit of 
interest was in last nite's pull), fixed what they said was a timezone 
related bug in one of the plasma packages (IIRC, in the shipped weather 
plasmoid, as they're doing a number of changes to it ATM).  Based on the 
comment, it had hard-coded UTC before as well.

So filling in the blanks from that, it would appear that either the 
required framework wasn't ready yet so apps that used it hardcoded UTC, 
or it was but it was bugged and only UTC was reliable/available, so 
that's what was used.

That would appear to have been fixed, and the live plasma packages I'm 
running just got a commit to make use of the fixed framework code now, 
but of course it'll be awhile before an actual release includes that 
code. (I'm running the live packages corresponding to the tip of the 
master branch, not the bugfix release current branch, so unless the 
changes are made to the bugfix branch as well, they won't be seen in a 
release until a new feature release.)

Assuming kdepim is doing similar, it should be in a release in six months 
or so, tho I'm not sure what their release cycle is, and of course don't 
know whether they'd put it in a bugfix release or wait for a feature 
release, so it could be sooner.

So it would seem to be a known issue with the current release, tho it's 
being fixed in master and thus should be fixed in some months, anyway.  
Meanwhile, the workaround of continuing to use the kde4 versions of those 
specific packages should work fine.

Of course if you have someone following live-git kdepim in comparable 
detail to what I am the non-kdepim kde family of packages I do have 
installed, they may be able to give you more kdepim-specific detail, but 
I found it real interesting that you posted this today, when I only saw 
that in the commit logs from yesterday's update, and that the previously 
forced UTC behavior matched so perfectly to what your dialog, from an 
entirely different set of kde packages I don't even have installed, said.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman