[tz] Version in zoneinfo files?

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Oct 27 17:34:12 UTC 2015


Guy Harris wrote:
> Which zone name is "the" zone name?  The zone name on the system on which zic was run?

I assume it'd be the name in the Zone directive of the zic input. Presumably zic 
would also have a new option to specify the version, and Makefile would use the 
new option. The version and zone name could be appended to the current tzfile 
format, e.g.,

ZONE=America/Los_Angeles
VERSION=2015g

If you copy or link the file, that wouldn't change its ZONE line. We'd bump the 
tzfile version number from '3' to '4'. ZONE and VERSION strings couldn't contain 
newlines. Or perhaps we should use a different convention that allows arbitrary 
data in strings.

This is doable; I'm not sure it's worth the hassle, though. There are political 
objections to some of the zone names, so putting them in the data files might 
raise a few eyebrows. On the technical side, if you change one source file, will 
you remember to change VERSION too? and will you be happy that your one little 
change to America/Podunk updates the VERSION string in all the files that zic 
produces? That sort of thing.


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