[tz] tzdata source compatibility

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 6 February 2018 at 16:37, Christos Zoulas <christos at zoulas.com> wrote:
> On Feb 6,  4:51pm, mark at macchiato.com (=?UTF-8?B?TWFyayBEYXZpcyDimJXvuI8=?=) wrote:
> -- Subject: Re: [tz] tzdata source compatibility
>
> | A 1 year expiration date is crazy. Look at the discussion of SAVE; it is
> | impossible to update all devices that consume the data in that timeframe.
> | Most have a mechanism for taking new data, but not new code.
>
> This is for the parsers. One would hope that the devices don't parse
> the tzdata source files!

Joda-Time is downloaded over 3 and a half million times each month (a
conservative estimate). Each copy has a time-zone parser that the
downloader can use on the tzdb source files. While the base parser can
indeed be fixed for a change, that doesn't fix the millions of copies
already downloaded.
Stephen