Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:67567
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 209.85.223.169 as permitted sender)
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CAEZPtU77ASyV7nG5Zrrk-P_Y-EKm+dMWX25dNZswi7W+Hd7Zgg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAH8Mpnkbhge8kS8Nv7Or9fgfxz2A0EXmLNEg=4c=D5zjaneSgg@mail.gmail.com>
	<CAEZPtU77ASyV7nG5Zrrk-P_Y-EKm+dMWX25dNZswi7W+Hd7Zgg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 19:35:42 -0400
Message-ID: <CAH8MpnnDK5jdRp_x3WipWKNH+nBNMBZ0tJW1rmX+kOjG3_VC2g@mail.gmail.com>
To: "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=e89a8f643b6e5f80c104ddbb9bec
Subject: date.timezone E_WARNING -- Really necessary? What's the rationale?
From: rdlowrey@gmail.com (Daniel Lowrey)

--e89a8f643b6e5f80c104ddbb9bec
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I understand that you can use php -d, but this is not a portable solution.
My specific use case is running a libevent-based HTTP server and I cannot
even run unit test suites without an .ini file because of this warning. Why
does PHP force me to include configuration directives that it clearly
doesn't need to function correctly? Forcing users to specify additional
command line options on every execution is no less pointless than than
requiring an .ini file where none is needed. A user's time zone setting is
simply not a language-level concern. Nor is a user's inability to
understand how timezones work. I appreciate Derrick's work on the extension
but I have yet to see any valid justification for triggering an error when
no error actually exists.

On Monday, May 27, 2013, Pierre Joye wrote:

> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 12:57 AM, Daniel Lowrey <rdlowrey@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > My problem with the current behavior is that it essentially *forces*
> > the use of an .ini file by triggering an error if no default is
> > assigned.
>
> No it does not. You can use:
>
> - php -d ...
> - date_default_timezone_set
>
> > Now, as far as I can tell the only argument put forward to justify
> > triggering the error is (summarized): many people are too stupid to
> > set a timezone and don't understand why the results of their date()
> > calls are different from their own timezone. This results in many
> > erroneous bug reports.
>
> It is not one of the arguments. The arguments are bad TZ, invalid TZ
> or inconsistent in system's TZ, which causes hard to catch bugs (and
> not possible to fix), non portable code (if you rely on a bad TZ), to
> name only a few.
>
> And I stop here for this discussion, I do not see any new arguments on
> both sides and a default TZ will very unlikely happen. Packagers could
> deal with that easily and application developers as well.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Pierre
>
> @pierrejoye |  http://www.libgd.org
>

--e89a8f643b6e5f80c104ddbb9bec--