[tz] Uruguay out of DST

Guy Harris guy at alum.mit.edu
Sat Jul 11 20:16:51 UTC 2015


On Jul 11, 2015, at 12:42 PM, Deborah Goldsmith <goldsmit at apple.com> wrote:

>> I.e., how soon can various vendors - including *but not limited to* Apple and Google, given that there are also a number of significant computing devices out there that run neither Android nor iOS (and without which a lot of those Android and iOS machines won't be able to get very much interesting stuff from the Interwebs) - deploy mechanisms to update time zone files without having to spin an entire OS release just to note that Elbonia is changing to start using DST?
> 
> As with all engineering efforts in corporations, as soon as possible, but no sooner.

So, if it hasn't already been suggested, could you suggest that Apple provide tzdb updates in the same fashion in which they provide printer driver updates and RAW camera updates, so that tzdb updates do *not* have to correspond to OS updates?

And perhaps do something even *more* automatic for iOS/AppleTVOS/WatchOS?  (Heck, I think the malware database updates happen automatically even for OS X, so maybe tzdb updates should happen automatically as well.)

> I should also point out that when you’re shipping something to hundreds of millions of customers, more testing is advisable than is possible in two hours.

I'm aware of that; how much testing time *is* reasonable?  (Note that the time scale is up to governments as much as it's up to the tzdb maintainers, if not more so; an announcement from the Elbonian government that they're permanently going off DST this weekend may not leave much time for testing.)

> Meanwhile, the current situation is what it is, and we need to get tz updates to customers as quickly as we can. I wouldn’t want to see IANA rush data out before it’s vetted, or if further revisions seem likely, but neither do I want to see IANA sit on the data if it’s unlikely to change.

"Unlikely to change" can be hard to guess.  My inclination is to assume no upper bound on the perversity of governments in, at least, announcing arbitrary changes, including changing their mind several times.


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