[tz] [PATCH 1/3] * backward: Move some links back to primary files.

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Sep 3 15:07:30 UTC 2013


Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> I note that America/Shiprock and Antarctica/South_Pole were not
> reverted. In my view, stability indicates that they should be
> reverted.

Those names were put into zone.tab in error, as they didn't
follow the rules given in Theory (not the current stable rules,
nor the currently-proposed rules, nor even the older rules).
We need to be able to correct errors in the database;
stability doesn't trump fixing mistakes.

> While this is not incorrect from a local time
> perspective, it doesn't seem right from a human perspective.

On the contrary, it's a win from the human perspective.
First, it simplifies the choice of TZ, by removing irrelevant
choices.  Second, for this particular example, the folks in
the South Pole are well aware that they keep New Zealand time,
since that's where they get their supplies from, and so this
change will match their human perspective.

> I would ask that the "backward" Link be
> from South_Pole to McMurdo

Longstanding practice has been to avoid links-to-links;
otherwise zic can misbehave.


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