[tz] tzdata2016g missing version information

[Paul Eggert]

On 09/29/2016 02:15 PM, Brian Inglis wrote:
> How about just keeping it pure data and calling it version.txt,
> version.list, version.version, or $PKG.version?
>

There are two disadvantages of that. First, the version string might 
happen to look like the start of a tz binary file (admittedly unlikely). 
Second and more important, this is a metadata file and there are likely 
to be future extensions (e.g., to specify the range of supported time 
stamps), so an extensible format is called for.

> If right directories are generated, please install leapseconds.list,
> either at the root or under right, so we can check if right data
> needs regenerated when leapseconds are updated: currently Debian
> installs it, Centos does not, others?

Where does Debian install it?

> Also if backzone is used, install that too as a flag that it was used.
>

We don't install other data source files (e.g., 'europe'). Perhaps there 
should be an option to install sources, though this is a bit unusual for 
software packages. If so, the option should install all the sources used.

> To make life easier for distribution packagers, and admins of systems 
> using
> distros, which is probably most (rather than assuming individuals 
> installing
> under the generic TOPDIR=/usr/local, which now should probably be 
> /usr/opt in
> most cases, and is fine for code) please consider defaulting 
> installation to
> the standard "TOP" dirs: /etc, /usr/sbin, /usr/share/..., etc. (zic is 
> normally
> installed in /usr/sbin), and take those variations into consideration in
> definitions and installation steps.

Is this standard written down anywhere?

>
> Please also consider adding a DOCDIR=/usr/share/doc/tzdata, define the 
> actual
> docs separate from MANS and COMMON, which includes Makefile (and 
> should include
> version), and install the docs, MANTXTS, and HTML in DOCDIR. Some 
> distros install
> some docs and some web pages, and some install none (e.g. Debian) with 
> the data.

I suppose something like this could be done. It'd help to have a survey 
all the places where this stuff is installed in various operating systems.

> Please also consider including your ChangeLog (from .gitignore), or 
> generating
> it with git log --decorate=full (currently ~1MB: could limit it to 
> [y-1]a..),
> and adding it to docs for installation: this makes it easier to see 
> what files
> changed.
>
This I'm not so sure about. My personal ChangeLog file is merely a 
staging area for text intended to go into commit messages, and it's not 
intended to be distributed. And I'm not sure it's anyway a good idea to 
install commit messages into the runtime environment. Software 
archaeologists who want commit history can easily get it from GitHub or 
wherever.