[tz] Version in zoneinfo files?

[lester at lsces.co.uk]

If the data being normalized NEEDS pre-1970 data to be correctly used, but the machines tz service does not have it we have no way of knowing there is actually a problem! Either we need to loose the two versions of data, or tag just which one was used. And that is before even adding version number ...

Sent from my android device so quoting is crap ... need to kill these painful email clients!

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Ganssle <paul at ganssle.io>
To: lester at lsces.co.uk
Cc: "tz at iana.org List" <tz at iana.org>, Bradley White <bww at acm.org>
Sent: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 4:38
Subject: Re: [tz] Version in zoneinfo files?

I'm not sure I understand why backzone data needs to be part of the version
tag. Isn't it sufficient to know the release version of the tzdata (as
these are archived and available)?
On Oct 27, 2015 11:34 PM, <lester at lsces.co.uk> wrote:

> The major problem all the time is identifying just what rules were applied
> when processing historic data, which may actually only be a current meeting
> diary. One can not assume that the current rule set actually correctly
> translates the current data if one set predates a later change. But my own
> data goes back to a time when the rules were more suspect, and reprocessing
> that data can result in confusion. We need to be able to assess if changes
> do affect either current or historic data and without a clean version
> number that is not posible. Removing backzone data also screws up historic
> data even only back to thd second world war, so that needs to be part of
> any versioning tag.
>
> Sent from my android device so quoting is crap ... need to kill these
> painful email clients!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bradley White <bww at acm.org>
> To: "tz at iana.org mailing list" <tz at iana.org>
> Sent: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:50
> Subject: Re: [tz] Version in zoneinfo files?
>
> On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> Is this just something to let people know whether they have an up-to-date
>> version of the tzdb files or not?
>>
>
> Yes, although I think of it simply as let people know what version of a
> tzdb file they have.  (Whether that is the latest version is a separate
> question.)
>
> I would even propose an additional self-identification step: include the
> zone name in tzdb file.  Then you could tell, for example, where
> /etc/localtime came from.
>
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