Daylight saving time (DST)

DST (a.k.a. `summer time') handling is always a delicate task which is better left to the operating system which is supposed to be configured by the administrator to behave correctly. Unfortunately, when doing calculations with date outside of the range supported by the standard library, we are forced to deal with these issues ourselves.

Several functions are provided to calculate the beginning and end of DST in the given year and to determine whether it is in effect at the given moment or not, but they should not be considered as absolutely correct because, first of all, they only work more or less correctly for only a handful of countries (any information about other ones appreciated!) and even for them the rules may perfectly well change in the future.

The time zone handling methods use these functions too, so they are subject to the same limitations.