[tz] OpenJDK/CLDR/ICU/Joda issues with Ireland change

Robert Elz kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Sun Jan 28 04:54:05 UTC 2018


	From: Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis at SystematicSw.ab.ca>
	Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2018 19:12:11 -0700
	Subject: Re: [tz] OpenJDK/CLDR/ICU/Joda issues with Ireland change

	NetBSD supports tzgetgmtoff(), tzgetname(),
	with tz and isdst parameters, since ~4.{2,3} according to ESR's doc.

It does (though I'm not sure what 4.2/3 you mean, unless that refers to
CSRG BSD 4.2 (as in released in 1982 or whatever it was).  But that
predates the ado timezone code, and particularly, anything which has
a tz parameter (which is even more recent) so that's unlikely.

NetBSD itself had no 4.2 or 4.3 releases, there was just 4.0 and 4.0.1
before NetBSD 5.   There was however a 1.4.2 and 1.4.3 back before
the numbering scheme was altered after 1.6 - used to be 1.1 1.2 1.3 ...
we switched to 2.0 3.0 ... (and minor relesaes for small updates and
fixed.)

They should be removed (and at the very least, never used) as the
information they provide is unreliable (essentially useless) - eg:
for CLDR use they would be incorrect, as they are very likely to return
"the" GMT offset (or name) for a zone for sometime in the period before
1990, probably even before 1970.   And of course with no indication
available of where (as in which era) they came from.

Like much other code related to time, they are making assumptions
about how things work that do not meet real world practice.
Everything that makes assumptions like that needs to vanish.

kre


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