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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>It's not just ICU. There are dozens of software frameworks and libraries that depend on tzdata and don't have automatic update mechanisms. Examples: PHP's integrated timezonedb package, Python's pytz library, Javascript's moment-timezone library, Java's time package and Joda Time, Net Noda time, etc... Many of these distribute packages through package managers such as pecl, pypi, npm, bower, etc. There's very rarely a built-in update mechanism.<div><br></div><div>The developer of a project that uses one of these libraries has to periodically check for an update, apply it to their software, and redeploy or redistribute their software. The library vendors usually can't initiate this process until an official tzdata release posted at IANA.</div><div><br></div><div>Our lead time should not be instantaneous, but we shouldn't wait till the last possible minute either. Somewhere in the middle is prefered.</div><div><br></div><div><div><div><div>> From: guy@alum.mit.edu<br>> Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2015 18:55:17 -0700<br>> To: tz@iana.org<br>> Subject: Re: [tz] Uruguay out of DST<br>> <br>> <br>> On Jul 11, 2015, at 6:46 PM, Deborah Goldsmith <goldsmit@apple.com> wrote:<br>> <br>> > Capsule version: ICU has a data file. ICU is not currently architected to allow you to swap out the data file, or a portion of it, while a process using ICU is running.<br>> > <br>> > Selecting a different time zone from the existing data file is an entirely different matter from replacing some or all of the data file itself.<br>> <br>> So, if the rules for the current time zone change, you would have to log out and log in again (shutting down and restarting apps that might be using ICU) to make the change take effect? (Thanks to localtime() not working that way, a reboot shouldn't be necessary unless there are long-running processes using ICU *not* associated with a user session.)<br>> <br>> Hopefully that can be fixed at some point, unless it'd take longer to do so than it'll take for tzdist to be a thing *and* ICU will be able to cope with updates from tzdist without a process restart.<br>> <br></div></div></div></div> </div></body>
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