[tz] tzdist and tz at iana

[Paul.Koning at dell.com]

> On Sep 7, 2016, at 2:35 PM, Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> On 07/09/16 18:56, Paul Eggert wrote:
>>> Are there any plans to support the tzdist format in tzcode?  Will IANA
>>> run its own "Time Zone Data Server"?
>> 
>> I don't know of any plans. As I've said, IANA doesn't have the resources
>> to serve billions of clients.
> 
> tz was always viewed as the primary source for tzdist, until there IS a
> primary source we can't start to create mirror sites. The mirror servers
> will provide alternate views of the master data or simply mirror a
> selected version of the tz raw data. We need a master that can provide
> the complete history of changes to tz data properly identified, or at
> least one starting from a current live version.

I would assume you could create a history from the entire set of archived tzdata* files.  That would be a one-time activity, and if any manual adjustment is needed to deal with oddities in old files, that wouldn't be a problem because it would not happen again.  Then as each new release comes out, it would be one more delta.

Presumably the tzdist master would go to the IANA tz repository for this, and all the mirrors would avoid bothering IANA and take from the master. 

	paul