[tz] tzdata2018a released

[Paul Eggert]

Seán Coffey wrote:
> It looks like 2018a has been released with a typo on the release date stamp :  
> (Released 2010-01-12) [1]

I think that typo was fixed on the web site after you sent your email.

> No announcement was sent to the announcement mailing list. Can the 
> administration of such releases be made more transparent please ? The same type 
> of admin issue happened during 2017.

There is a delay between the release and the announcement. This delay is partly 
because I want to check for mistakes in publication. As it happened, a mistake 
was discovered in 2018a before the the announcement was sent out, so I plan to 
fix that in 2018b shortly, and do not plan to send email to the announcement 
list before 2018b is published.

The procedure for publishing new releases is indeed a too cumbersome, and it 
would be nice if it could be streamlined. I doubt whether we'll be able to 
eliminate delays entirely, though.