[tz] tzdata2011l.tar.gz

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:42:16 +0200
    From:        David Zülke <david.zuelke at bitextender.com>
    Message-ID:  <D6D084ED-BABA-4BF7-BA4F-69CA4C3FC41A at bitextender.com>

  | You did not increment the version numbers in the files you changed,

Ian Abbott indicated the source of those, but not withstanding that, I could
have updated them (manually) I just decided not to, for now.   However, if
having those version numbers updated is useful to people (and I know they have
been used in the past to confirm that you are at the latest version in
case of apparent discrepancies) I can do it - if that's what people prefer.

I can see three ways (and there could of course be more) that that could be
done - aside from just doing nothing ...   First, would be to pretend to be
sccs, and produce numbers indistinguishable from what it would produce.
Second, would be to modify the numbers in a way sccs would not, but still
allow them to move "forward" - the easy way to do that would be to append
a sub-version number (making say 8.50.1 for northamerica) and just
continue from there, leaving 8.51 for ado's next version, if that ever
happens.    [Aside: yes, I know a sccs branch could produce a number like that,
but the tz files have no branches, and in any case, sccs would add 2 
sub-version numbers, I believe, never just one.]   Or, third, I could insert
my owv version numbers to run in parallel - I have the data in RCS files
(just for convenience, some of you probably already detected that from looking
at the precise details of the diff I sent out) and RCS has its own version
numbering scheme, I could just add those version numbers (they they could be
removed again sometime later).

Which do you all prefer?

Øyvind Holm <sunny at sunbase.org> said:
  | But I notice there's lots of unrelated files and directories in the pub/
  | directory. Would it be possible to move the files into a separate tzdata/
  | directory

Of course, it would be possible, but for now I don't think I'll do that.
As much as possible I'd prefer to retain as much of the style of ado's
distributions as possible - they were in pub at elsie, the files have also
always been in pub on munnari, I think just leaving them in pub on munnari
is adequate for now.   After all, at least for now, there are just two files
(and later perhaps 4 if/when we add detatched signatures).

The oldtz directory is just for us here, no normal humans should be going
near it, it is of sudden interest only because people have been (quite well
it seems) looking for methods to re-create ado's sccs database (in other
version control systems) and so need access to all the earlier data.   That's
fine (for that purpose, or just to retain it for posterity) but it isn't
something that should, or rationally would want, to otherwise be widely
distributed.

And lastly  Kevin Lyda <kevin at ie.suberic.net> said:
  | There are several places in the code that refer to the ftp server and
  | mailing list on elsie.

I suspect the elsie mailing list is dead forever now, and the iana version
will take over, so those changes (thanks for the patch) make sense.  I'm
not sure yet about the source repository doc changes, why not just wait
a little longer until we see how the dust settles on that before we
start documenting the current (temporary) arrangements ?

kre