Exception handling with odd zoneinfo

[Malcolm Matalka]

I am using async and have an error in my code but unfortunately the
actual error is being hidden because the handler is blowing up. I am
running NixOS which puts zoneinfo in a funny spot. The error is below.

Any suggestions?

Uncaught exception:
(Sys_error "/usr/share/zoneinfo/: No such file or directory")
Raised by primitive operation at file "lib/zone.ml", line 402,
characters 26-41
Called from file "lib/zone.ml", line 447, characters 10-64
Called from file "lib/with_return.ml", line 18, characters 12-24
Re-raised at file "lib/with_return.ml", line 25, characters 17-20
Called from file "lib/zone.ml", line 616, characters 16-60
Called from file "lib/time0.ml", line 225, characters 35-55
Called from file "lib/time0.ml", line 423, characters 27-54
Called from file "lib/debug.ml", line 8, characters 19-82
Called from file "lib/raw_scheduler.ml", line 715, characters 4-82
Called from file "lib/command.ml", line 1412, characters 6-46
Called from file "lib/exn.ml", line 69, characters 6-10

[Yaron Minsky]

Well, it seems like we should probably aim to fix zone.ml, no? Where
is it located on nixos? Perhaps we need to support a list of possible
locations, or an architecture specific hack, I'm not sure.

y

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[Malcolm Matalka]

Hah, well, in NixOS that's an interesting question. Right now it's in:

/nix/store/8s0qcpaci6fychmpv4yjijs8ns5nxwkp-tzdata-2014b/share/zoneinfo

But in a new build of tzdata it will change.

My suggestion is to drop to UTC if any zone information cannot be found.

Also, is there a mechanism for injecting the zone location in? Perhaps
putting it into an env variable?

[Yaron Minsky]

The environment variable doesn't seem crazy. I have no objection.
You could propose a way of doing it with a pull request, and we can
look at it from there.

y

[Malcolm Matalka]

Sounds good! Thanks.