[tz] Astrakhan region got approval to change its time zone

[Paul Eggert]

Lester Caine wrote:
> On 15/02/16 09:07, Paul Eggert wrote:
>> Tue Jul  1 12:31:27 LST 2014
>> Mon Feb 15 03:18:46 LST 2016
>> Sat Jul  1 23:51:21 LST 2017
> Presume you meant LDT for July?

No; given the proposed patch, Astrakhan has not observed DST since October 2010. 
It just keeps changing its mind about its standard-time UTC offset.

> The one thing I still find a major problem is the fact that dates which
> involve a daylight saving element are not easy to identify.

This is a feature more than it is a bug. Too often we invent the tm_isdst flag: 
that is, the flag is a property of tzdata that is in tzdata primarily because 
the database format requires a value for it. In these cases it's better to avoid 
propagating this invention into old-style time stamps like 'date' output in the 
C locale. This sort of thing is rarely an issue in well-settled locales typical 
of North America and western Europe, but it is a problem elsewhere, often in the 
regions where we don't want to be inventing abbreviations either.