proposed changes to zic and zdump

Chuck Soper chucks at lmi.net
Tue Sep 9 05:43:35 UTC 2003


At 8:37 PM -0400 8/21/03, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) wrote:
>Below are changes to zic and zdump code and documentation to cover
>"--version" options;
>there's also a zic buglet fix.

I think that a new "--version" option is a good enhancement.

In addition, being able to determine the overall release number (e.g. 
2003a) of the tz database would be very useful. Could the zic and 
zdump executables report the release number with a particular option 
such as "--release"? It is common for Windows and Macintosh 
applications to be able to specify both a version number (e.g. 7.19) 
and a release number (e.g. 2003a). Sometimes this release number 
stored in a file or variable outside of the executable file. 
Unfortunately, I do not have a strong unix development background and 
I'm not sure if there is a standard way to report a release number 
for a set of executables and data files.

>If folks are happy I'll incorporate these in the next release (due around
>the last Sunday in October,
>after any data changes have arrived).
>
>I'm deferring the business of putting identifiers into the output of zic to
>identify
>the source of the output. There are two areas to ponder:
>
>1.  An output file depends on the version of zic that was used to create it
>as well as one or more input files (certainly the file that contains the
>relevant
>"Zone" line, but also perhaps a leap second file and--potentially at
>least--one or
>more files that contain "Rule" lines. What information is sufficient?
>
>2.  Does the information need to be reflected in the header of the output
>file,
>or is it sufficient to just append the information to the end of the
>generated output?
>
>				--ado

My suggestion is that the output files do not use store version 
information in the header. I think that the output files should 
contain only data and not include meta data. (Previously, I had agree 
with someone on the list that suggested using the header for version 
information).



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