[tz] Version in zoneinfo files?

[Paul Goyette]

On Thu, 9 Feb 2017, Paul Eggert wrote:

> It seems so -- at least under the proposals I've seen so far, as if
> consumers are running software derived from tzcode, they would need
> to upgrade, as otherwise the code would mishandle some timestamps. I
> haven't looked at non-tzcode-derived libraries but I expect many
> would be similar. We'd rather avoid this, of course.

While avoiding a version bump is desirable, it's not always possible.

It seems to me that the pain of a version bump could be ameliorated by 
having both

* new code able to read and process both old and new versions, and
* zic growing a new option to produce either old or new "compiled"
   versions of the zone files (default version TBD)




+------------------+--------------------------+------------------------+
| Paul Goyette     | PGP Key fingerprint:     | E-mail addresses:      |
| (Retired)        | FA29 0E3B 35AF E8AE 6651 | paul at whooppee.com   |
| Kernel Developer | 0786 F758 55DE 53BA 7731 | pgoyette at netbsd.org |
+------------------+--------------------------+------------------------+