[tz] timezone DB distribution

[Paul Eggert]

On 8/20/20 12:33 PM, Brian Inglis wrote:
> They often have bigger issues with space for decoding, data storage, and use;
> one suggestion was a stream compressed list of file base names and POSIX strings
> from the last line of the files e.g.

The main argument for POSIX strings is simplicity rather than saving storage or 
network capacity or even CPU time. Currently all the tzdb data can be compressed 
to 22,418 bytes, via 'lzip -9 tzdata.zi'. Although limiting tzdata to 
(compressed) names and POSIX strings would shrink that considerably, I doubt 
whether the data shrinkage is worth it, except perhaps for embedded applications 
where all timestamps are future timestamps.