My confusion with Asia/Aqtau

[Martin Smoot]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> 
> Chuck Soper <chucks at lmi.net> writes:
> 
> > Does this indicate that I'm using a different version of the timezone package?
> 
> Most likely, yes.
> 
> > How can I determine what version of the timezone package is installed
> > on my system? I hope that I'm using version 2003a.
> 
> There should be a way to do this, at least for the timezone code like
> zdump.c.  Perhaps you could add a "--version" option for zdump and
> zic?  If you donated code to do that, I suspect that Arthur David
> Olson would buy it.
> 
> zdump has this at the start:
> 
> #ifndef lint
> #ifndef NOID
> static char     elsieid[] = "@(#)zdump.c        7.29";
> #endif /* !defined NOID */
> #endif /* !defined lint */
> 
> and zic.c has something similar, but they don't work well.
> Nowadays many compilers optimize away these unused strings.
> 
> Basicall, all the "--version" option needs to do is to print
> the elsieid.

I think the --version is a good idea but just showing the file version does not
give enough information.  the statement "I hope that I'm using version 2003a."
indicates that we also need to include the tz version where the change was
added.

there are also times where the update does not have any code changes - just data
changes.  it does not seem to be possible to tell what version of the data is
actually being used.  there may be many cases where only the final data is
available but none of the rule data files.  there is reserved data in the header
of each file (16 bytes) - would this be a good location to put this kind of
information?

-- 
Martin Smoot
Network Storage Solutions
703-834-2242
msmoot at nssolutions.com         www.nssolutions.com