[tz] Version identification (was Re: Downstream use of 2021c)

Arthur David Olson arthurdavidolson at gmail.com
Thu Oct 7 20:41:33 UTC 2021


One odd possibility on standardizing access to version information: a zic'd
line such as...
    Zone Version 0 - 2021c
...would allow use of the command...
   TZ=Version date
...to discover the version.-)

    @dashdashado

On Thu, Oct 7, 2021 at 1:01 PM Tom Lane via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> Philip Paeps via tz <tz at iana.org> writes:
> > This is looking terribly fragmented.  Spare a thought for a hypothetical
> > engineer tasked with debugging a Java application on Debian with some
> > Python scripts on Fedora talking to a PostgreSQL database running on
> > FreeBSD...
>
> BTW, that brings a thought to mind: why isn't there an easy way to
> identify the release version of an installed tzdata tree?
>
> I'm envisioning that there could be a text file at the top level,
> say /usr/share/zoneinfo/version in typical layouts, containing
> "2021a" or the appropriate string.  This'd make it a lot easier
> to diagnose what you've got in a particular installation.
>
> Some vendors (Red Hat at least) include the tzdata.zi file in
> /usr/share/zoneinfo.  I persuaded Paul awhile back to put a
> version comment at the top of that, so that provides a way to
> determine the version if your vendor did that.  But it seems
> like a mighty redundant approach.
>
>                         regards, tom lane
>
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