[tz] Proposal: validation text file with releases

[Jon Skeet]

I'd be perfectly happy with zdump gaining more display options, but I think
there's still huge benefit in deciding on one *canonical* format for
validation. It means that single format can be distributed rather than
everyone having to build and run zic themselves, just to get output that
can be centrally distributed. (Even if it isn't part of the IANA
distribution, I can host that canonical format - not ideal, but better than
nothing.) With a to-the-byte canonical format, I'm also happy to put the
SHA-1 hashes up.

As one point I suspect we could all agree on: assuming there is to be a
canonical format, should we use "\n" as the line separator? (My current
format uses \r\n, but I think that's likely to cause more pain than it
alleviates.)

Jon


On 28 April 2016 at 18:18, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> One way forward here would be to give zdump more options to let the user
> specify the format. That way, everybody could use their own favorite
> format. One format might look something like this for America/Los_Angeles,
> assuming the default zdump window of -500 through 2499 CE UTC:
>
>     -501-12-31 16:07:02 -07:52:58 0 LMT
>     1883-11-18 12:00 -08 0 PST
>     1918-03-31 03:00 -07 1 PDT
>     1918-10-27 01:00 -08 0 PST
>     ...
>     2016-03-13 03:00 -07 1 PDT
>     2016-11-06 01:00 -08 0 PST
>     ...
>     2499-03-08 03:00 -07 1 PDT
>     2499-11-01 01:00 -08 0 PST
>
> (The "1" and "0" are whether DST is in effect.) This completely
> characterizes the data and is more compact and easier to read than what
> zdump outputs now. Other formats might be preferable for other reasons.
>
> It might also be nice to output "PST8PDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0" at the end,
> instead of that repetitive list of lines starting with the year 2007.
>
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