[tz] Are tzdata2016g & tzdata-latest missing the VERSION file?

Barry Allard barry.allard at gmail.com
Fri Sep 30 09:18:27 UTC 2016


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Hello,

Thanks to all the folks whom have maintained and contributed to this
vital database over the for years.

Has the format changed somehow? If this and future database files were
to break backwards-compatibility arbitrarily, it would be an
unwelcome, breaking change for potentially tens- to
hundreds-of-thousands of deployed endpoints and would an expensive
burden and require lots of system software providers to repackage and
push new software to untold millions to billions of endpoints, some of
which are for-all-practical-purposes immutable (such as embedded
systems / SCADA). In short: it would make a lot of people mad because
it would be very expensive and time-consuming to change.

For example, here's just one error from a wide-deployed utility
(TZUpdater 2.1) which worked using tzdata2016f, but not with
tzdata-latest nor tzdata2016g:

$ java -jar tzupdater.jar -l
https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/tzdata-latest.tar.gz
Using https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/tzdata-latest.tar.gz
as source for tzdata bundle.
Source directory does not contain file: VERSION
$

$ java -jar tzupdater.jar -l
https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2016f.tar.gz
Using https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2016f.tar.gz
as source for tzdata bundle.
JRE has the same version as the tzupdater provided one (tzdata2016f).
$

If I might humbly suggest continuing using what was a de-facto
standard for stability and least-surprise, where at all possible.

Thanks,
Barry Allard

PS: I saw a related past discussion but can't respond to it right now.
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