[tz] [tz-announce] 2018f release of tz code and data available

[Stephen Colebourne]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 22:32, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>
> On 10/23/18 1:39 PM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> > Great, But as I indicated earlier (and as per another recent thread),
> > what the Java world really needs is for a 2018g to be released that
> > uses 01:00 instead of 25:00 in the main format (not rearguard).
>
> Sorry, I'm not understanding the distinction. A rearguard tarball
> contains .zi files, and Oracle's Java-based tools accept .zi files. Why
> don't these tools accept the .zi files in a rearguard tarball? In other
> words, goes wrong if you try to use a rearguard tarball with Oracle's
> Java-based tools?

The issue is that virtually no-one knows about those additional
distributions. I didn't and I follow the list! Oracle's tzupdater is
not the only tool in the world of Java that uses these files and not
the only one broken. Bear in mind that users download tzdb data files
directly, so trying to teach them to find a different, hidden,
distribution isn't a great idea. I really don't think my request to
revert the main file for 15 months is unreasonable.

Stephen