[tz] Getting current tzdb version in use
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Thu Jul 19 14:51:28 UTC 2018
Martin Burnicki wrote:
> So the*implementation* of this feature in the lib would also be easier
> if tzdb provided a standard way to get the version.
/usr/share/zoneinfo/tzdata.zi contains a "# version" line. Though this is
reasonably recent in tzdb, and many distributions don't install that file, and
it's not part of the stable API.
I have my doubts about the version info. Many distributions apply local changes
to their tzdb data, and I expect that they're not updating the version line
appropriately. So all you have is some sort of vague good-faith attempt at
version info; it doesn't guarantee that you have a particular tzdb release. That
is, the version info is not something that a portable program should rely on;
all it's really good for is as a string that the program can report to the user
so that the user can try to debug whatever goes wrong.
More information about the tz
mailing list