[tz] Proposal: validation text file with releases

[Jon Skeet]

On Tuesday, July 14, 2015, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','eggert at cs.ucla.edu');>> wrote:

> Jon Skeet wrote:
>
>> (and with a better
>> implementation of my zdump munging - ideally something in zic itself, I
>> suspect)
>>
>
> Why would zic need to be involved?  zdump uses only the standard POSIX API
> and should work even on platforms that don't use zic or the tz database at
> all.
>

Unfortunately dump doesn't have all the information I'd wish it to - namely
the split between standard and daylight offsets. It indicates whether a
zone is in daylight savings or not, but not how much that contributes to
the overall offset.

As for platforms that don't use the tz database at all - as the purpose of
this is to validate the use of the tz database, I'm not sure that's much of
an advantage. I'd anticipate the output being distributed alongside (but
not within) the data file, so prospective users still wouldn't need to be
using a tz-based platform themselves.

I haven't yet got a feeling for your thoughts on the proposal... is this
something you can see any future in? I suppose the canonical file wouldn't
*have* to come from IANA, but that does feel like the best option.

Jon
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