[tz] [PATCH 2/3] Replace some zones with links when that doesn't lose non-LMT info.

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 4 September 2013 22:32, Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> On Sep 4, 2013, at 2:23 PM, Garrett Wollman <wollman at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
>> I do think, on a more general level, that it is a bit unfortunate that
>> the format of the tzdata files is now effectively frozen because so
>> many external users have chosen to parse the source rather than the
>> compiled form.  This will make it much more difficult to make changes
>> in the future, should they be needed.
>
> If we want to do that (e.g., if we were to introduce the CLDR concept of meta-zones into the tzdb, so that the CLDR doesn't have to duplicate transition time/date information that's in the tzdb - see the usesMetazone items in metaZones.xml), we might end up creating a new source file format and have a tool that reads the new format and emits the old format.

Just to note that I parse the source tzdb because the binary data does
not contain all the data AFAIK. A new source format that generates a
file in the old format would work so long as the distribution
contained the generated old format files.

Stephen