[tz] make error

[Paul Eggert]

On 2023-11-17 00:30, Robert Elz wrote:
> future version probably ought to be
> rather distant future, not next year sometime (or even the next few years
> after that).

Good point. From what we know now, 2029 might be a good year to do it, 
as RHEL 7 ELS ends June 2028. I installed the attached proposed patch. 
We can of course delay until after 2029 as more info becomes known.


> It might be worth adding a "common issues" file

Yes, GNU Emacs does something like this, with its etc/PROBLEMS file 
(currently 4412 lines).

Currently TZDB puts this sort of thing in Makefile, which discusses the 
C89 issue along with dozens of similar porting issues. Evidently 
Makefile isn't always being read; this is not surprising as it has 
hundreds of lines of comments.

Not sure that a separate PROBLEMS file (which would also have hundreds 
of lines) would always be read either. To some extent we'll always be 
stuck getting email saying "this doesn't work for me" by people who 
haven't had time to read the relevant documentation, regardless of where 
that documentation is.

For what it's worth, the Emacs etc/PROBLEMS file contains a long list of 
problems most of which nobody ever runs into nowadays, and hardly 
anybody reads the file.
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