[tz] Regression Tests and Revision Controls
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Fri Aug 15 06:46:20 UTC 2014
Lester Caine wrote:
> My reading of the paperwork
> so far is that it is planned to have a full range base,
Sorry, I don't know what a 'full range base' is, but there are no plans
for a full coverage of all civil time stamps in every era. My only plan
for backzone now is to be a repository for questionable/out-of-scope
(pre-1970) data that we can easily move out of the tz database proper,
one step at a time. If people want to donate other data (within reason;
see below) that'd be fine, but it's not something I want to spend time
on. The backzone file is out of scope for this project and if managing
it becomes a significant burden we should spin it out into a separate
project.
> what is not
> clear is how new historic data that identifies that a current timezone
> now has two historic routes.
For current backzone entries this can be deduced from pre1970.tab. If
backzone gets more complicated I suggest adding commentary to it in case
a zone's boundaries are not clear. Or if that's not enough, do a
database redesign as a separate project.
> The planing seems to be based on tz zones,
> but as with all of these things there is no planning to manage tz
> identifiers.
The current approach will not scale. It's meant only for relatively
modest growth, where we can manage identifiers the same way we've always
managed them. Sorry, but a database redesign will be needed to cover
appreciable quantities of pre-1970 data.
> Can we not just describe 'backzone' as historic data.
Sorry, I don't follow. The tz database is almost all historic data.
> That the
> provenance of some material is 'poorly-sourced' just needs to be
> properly flagged within the file.
It is, in commentary within the file. If those comments are not clear
please feel free to submit patches; see the CONTRIBUTING file.
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