[tz] Time Zone Database Update

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Wed May 18 07:43:19 UTC 2016


sherif.atef at hsbc.com wrote:

> it is possible that there 
> will not be any further confirmations and that the government of Egypt can apply 
> it still.

Yes, the underlying problem is that it is hard to predict what the Egyptian
government will do. Maybe clocks will move forward on July 7, maybe it'll be
some other date, and it's possible the clocks won't change after all.

It's not good to wait until the last minute before releasing a tzdata update. On
the other hand it's not good to cry wolf about a change that might not happen or
that might happen differently. In a situation like this, reasonable people can
differ about what to do. That being said, given that we have seven weeks before
the hypothetical deadline, there is no particular rush in releasing right away.
We can wait for a few weeks longer, as Matt Johnson suggested.

Do you have some contacts with the Egyptian government, to ask them what the
situation is? Or can you make some contacts? Surely it should be of some concern
to the government that software developers who are trying to help make
computer-based clocks work correctly in Egypt are not sure about what to do. The
longer they wait to make it official, the more clocks will be wrong on the big
day (assuming the big day happens).

> If there is a test database (Unable to access the link by the way)

Hmm, I just now checked this URL:

https://github.com/eggert/tz

and it worked for me. You should be able to clone the entire experimental
repository by running the following shell command:

git clone https://github.com/eggert/tz.git

If this doesn't work, it might help to report the symptoms you observe.

> I think it may be better if the database is released officially , fixes are 
> prepared and then it is left to people in Egypt to either apply it if the 
> decision is applied by the government or to drop it if not.

You should be able to apply the proposed Egypt patch now, by using the
experimental repository. If you can't access the repository, you can apply the
attached patches to 2016d, the most recent release; this should be result in a
database that is identical to what is currently in the experimental repository.
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