+ 

+ [[full-removal-of-tzdata-in-containers]]

+ == Allow full removal of the `tzdata` package in containers

+ 

+ Previously, you could not fully remove `tzdata` in a container due to the package dependencies inside the container. This practice left inconsistent package remnants, and resulted in a confusion about the expected timezone information. This update fixes the problem by making the packages that use `tzdata` at runtime switch from **Require**'ing `tzdata` to **Recommend**'ing `tzdata`. As a result, those packages will gracefully handle the instances where `tzdata` has been removed, and the container environment will default to the UTC standard. Note that removing `tzdata` in a container will reduce the container size.