Notes

Node Timezones

Today I debugged some issues with javascript’s time zone support. Unlike most other parts of the Node.js standard libraries, time zone converstion data changes from time to time based on different countries’ whims. Usually, these changes are for minor countries or are minor changes to time zone boundaries, but recently, Brazil decided to end daylight savings with six months notice.

Looking at node specifically, it looks like nodejs’s Intl library depends on ICU, which depends on tzdata. However, even the most current stable version of node as of this writing (v13.0.1) uses ICU version 64.2, which depends on tzdata 2019a which is outdated. On November 3, no stable release of Node will correctly calculate Brazil’s time zone.