[tz] Tonga returns to DST on 2016-11-06
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Fri Nov 4 18:31:42 UTC 2016
On 11/04/2016 11:06 AM, Paul G wrote:
> I think Paul meant that the "official" release would be the act of
> tagging the repo with the new version, not any random change.
Yes, that's the intent. I installed the attached proposed patch to try
to clarify this. Most of the changes are to tz-link.htm not Theory,
since tz-link.htm talks about the distribution procedure.
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From 55ac4f085ecaf7ef0a0c010672fc52717680e6b1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2016 11:26:36 -0700
Subject: [PROPOSED] Document commit tags better
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* NEWS: Document this. Don’t say “official” when it’s not official.
* Theory (Interface stability):
Point to tz-link.htm for how releases are distributed.
* tz-link.htm (The tz database): Document relationship between
development commit tags and release numbers. Give shell command
for cloning development repository.
---
NEWS | 8 +++++++-
Theory | 10 ++++++----
tz-link.htm | 21 ++++++++++++---------
3 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 4eca755..d5f7217 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -15,6 +15,12 @@ Unreleased, experimental changes
should now work better on systems where the 'link' system call
does not follow symbolic links.
+ Changes to documentation and commentary
+
+ tz-link.htm now documents the relationship between release version
+ numbers and development-repository commit tags. (Suggested by
+ Paul Koning.)
+
Release 2016i - 2016-11-01 23:19:52 -0700
@@ -228,7 +234,7 @@ Release 2016g - 2016-09-13 08:56:38 -0700
23 commits and some working-file changes have been made since
release 2016g, the version number is now something like
'2016g-23-g50556e3-dirty' instead of the misleading '2016g'.
- Official releases uses the same version number format as before,
+ Tagged releases use the same version number format as before,
e.g., '2016g'. To support the more-accurate version number, its
specification has moved from a line in the Makefile to a new
source file 'version'.
diff --git a/Theory b/Theory
index 677baf6..07e449b 100644
--- a/Theory
+++ b/Theory
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ Theory and pragmatics of the tz code and data
Time zone abbreviations
Accuracy of the tz database
Time and date functions
+ Interface stability
Calendrical issues
Time and time zones on Mars
@@ -601,10 +602,11 @@ The tz code and data supply the following interfaces:
* The format of the country code file, documented in iso3166.tab.
-When these interfaces are changed, an effort is made to preserve
-backward compatibility. For example, tz data files typically do not
-rely on recently-added zic features, so that users can run older zic
-versions to process newer data files.
+Interface changes in a release attempt to preserve compatibility with
+recent releases. For example, tz data files typically do not rely on
+recently-added zic features, so that users can run older zic versions
+to process newer data files. The tz-link.htm file describes how
+releases are tagged and distributed.
Interfaces not listed above are less stable. For example, users
should not rely on particular UT offsets or abbreviations for time
diff --git a/tz-link.htm b/tz-link.htm
index aec8a1c..46be1ad 100644
--- a/tz-link.htm
+++ b/tz-link.htm
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
content="Sources for time zone and daylight saving time data">
<meta name="DC.Creator" content="Eggert, Paul">
<meta name="DC.Contributor" content="Olson, Arthur David">
-<meta name="DC.Date" content="2016-11-01">
+<meta name="DC.Date" content="2016-11-04">
<meta name="DC.Description"
content="Sources of information about time zones and daylight saving time">
<meta name="DC.Identifier"
@@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ gzip -dc tzdata-latest.tar.gz | tar -xf -
<p>Alternatively, the following shell commands download the same
release in a single-tarball format containing extra data
useful for regression testing:</p>
-<pre style="margin-left: 2em"><code>wget --retr-symlinks 'ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzdb-latest.tar.lz'
+<pre style="margin-left: 2em"><code>wget <a href="ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzdb-latest.tar.lz">ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzdb-latest.tar.lz</a>
<a href="http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/">lzip</a> -dc tzdb-latest.tar.lz | tar -xf -
</code></pre>
<p>These commands use convenience links to the latest of the
@@ -139,14 +139,17 @@ through <samp>zzz</samp>, and so on).
The releases can also be obtained from the
<a href="http://www.iana.org/time-zones">Time Zone Database website</a>
of the <a href="http://www.iana.org">Internet Assigned Numbers
-Authority (IANA)</a>.
-A <a href="https://github.com/eggert/tz">development
-repository</a> of the code and data is available
-in <a href="https://git-scm.com">Git</a> form
-from <a href="https://github.com">GitHub</a>; be careful, as this
-repository is less well tested and probably contains more errors.
+Authority (IANA)</a>.</p>
+<p>Alternatively, a development repository of code and data can be
+retrieved from <a href="https://github.com">GitHub</a> via the shell
+command:</p>
+<pre style="margin-left: 2em"><code><a href="https://git-scm.com">git</a> clone <a href="https://github.com/eggert/tz">https://github.com/eggert/tz</a>
+</code></pre>
+<p>Since 2012, each release has been tagged in the development
+repository. Untagged commits are less well tested and probably contain
+more errors.</p>
<p>
-After extracting a distribution's files, see its
+After obtaining the code and data files, see the
<code>README</code> file for what to do next.
The code lets you compile the <code><abbr>tz</abbr></code> source files into
machine-readable binary files, one for each location. It also lets
--
2.7.4
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