Use -s to pass string date to 'adb shell date' command to set date in provision.

build/android/provision_devices.py

Index: build/android/provision_devices.py
diff --git a/build/android/provision_devices.py b/build/android/provision_devices.py
index 468ef3f324261359e7fe266cf1bac32c49fb6977..a2367a64bd66efaf5a984d39287f000a88daa9ac 100755
--- a/build/android/provision_devices.py
+++ b/build/android/provision_devices.py
@@ -190,7 +190,11 @@ def ProvisionDevice(device, options, is_perf):
                      battery_info.get('level', 0))
         time.sleep(60)
         battery_info = device.old_interface.GetBatteryInfo()
-    device.RunShellCommand('date -u %f' % time.time(), as_root=True)
+    # Need to set env var 'TZ' to 'UTC' so that devices set to UTC time.
+    os.environ['TZ'] = 'UTC'
+    time.tzset()
+    device.RunShellCommand('date -s %s' % time.strftime('%Y%m%d.%I%M%S'),

[jbudorick, 2014/10/22 15:52:11]

Can you just do time.strftime(..., time.gmtime()) and drop the preceding two
lines?

[navabi, 2014/10/22 16:17:35]

Done.

+                           as_root=True)
     # TODO(jbudorick): Tune the timeout per OS version.
     device.Reboot(True, timeout=600, retries=0)
     props = device.RunShellCommand('getprop')