[tz] Version in zoneinfo files?

Ian Abbott abbotti at mev.co.uk
Fri Feb 10 10:38:48 UTC 2017


On 10/02/2017 01:37, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 02/09/2017 04:44 PM, Steven R. Loomis wrote:
>> Trying to locate
>> the actual id of a zone file is itself a huge hassle, as John Layt also
>> noted in http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2015-October/022838.html
>
> Yes, it is a real management hassle that is not trivial to solve.
> Unfortunately nobody has had the time to come up with a practical
> solution, as far as I know.
>
>>>> There are political objections to some of the zone names, so putting
>>>> them in the data files might raise a few eyebrows.
>> Wouldn't the names have been filenames elsewhere on disk, somewhere in
>> the "zoneinfo" directory?
>
> Not in some installations. Android, I think, does not create filenames
> like "America/New_York". More important, these names are not part of the
> format now, and standardizing them in the format would increase the
> likelihood of causing political irritations. And still more important,
> downstream users are free to add to the list of names, and many do so;
> this lessens the utility of using a "standard" name, as these names are
> not as "standard" as one might want.

The political irritations could be eliminated by assigning a numeric ID 
to each zone and storing that in the binary file (along with version 
information, if deemed necessary).  This might require numeric IDs to be 
added to the source data files.  They _could_ be generated from a hash 
of the name, but sometimes the name changes sometimes (e.g. 
Asia/Kolkatta) and it would be nice to have a stable ID for a zone.

-- 
-=( Ian Abbott @ MEV Ltd.    E-mail: <abbotti at mev.co.uk> )=-
-=(                          Web: http://www.mev.co.uk/  )=-


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