'juju status' wall clock timestamps should display offset not TZ abbrev

[Stuart Bishop]

'juju status' output displays timestamps in local time using the timezone abbreviation. These abbreviations are not unique and are ambiguous. They are not machine parseable, and should never be used in otherwise machine parsable data such as the yaml and JSON output of 'juju status'.

ISO8601, or its subset RFC3339, define the readable and parseable format expected by users. '2015-05-28 12:54:48+07:00' rather than the localized version which may specify several ambiguous timestamps and may not even be ASCII.

You may want to collapse this and Bug #1459611 into a single bug.

[Ian Booth (wallyworld)]

We decided in talking to our IS people in Nuremburg recently that they would accept juju status displaying local time by default, and a --utc flag used to output time in a machine parsable format and UTC not local. Normal users tell us they want local time. So we opted for that as the default, but still provided the other option for scripts etc using the --utc flag.

Marking this as Won't Fix. If we want to change it, will need to involve end user stakeholders etc and discuss.

[Nate Finch (natefinch)]

Note, this is marked as Won't Fix only because we aren't changing the default. The --utc flag exists today and gives the desired result.

[Nate Finch (natefinch)]

That's what I get for not reading the linked bug.... --utc provides the requested format, but does not actually display UTC, it displays local time.

[Stuart Bishop (stub)]

Reopening this as the comments indicate misunderstanding. This bug is about displaying the timezone offset instead of the timezone abbreviation, such as defined by RFC3339 or ISO8601.

Wallclock timestamps displaying their offset are unambiguous and can be parsed and converted. Wallclock timestamps using abbreviations can refer to several points in time (as regious share abbreviations), or even two points in time in the same region if it occurred during a daylight savings time transition. It struck me as wrong that the machine readable JSON and YAML output is using a timestamp format that cannot be parsed.