[tz] About missing country in your Time Zone Database?

[Philip Paeps]

On 2021-05-07 04:37:20 (+0800), Paul Eggert via tz wrote:
> On 5/5/21 11:27 AM, Sadiku, Besnik via tz wrote:
>> I ... noticed that Kosovo is missing in the Time Zone Database list.
>
> Good eye. However, although tzdb originally had entries for most 
> countries, an entry is no longer needed if a country's clocks agree 
> with a neighboring region since 1970; see 
> <https://data.iana.org/time-zones/theory.html#naming> . The helps 
> insulate tzdb somewhat from political issues.
>
> tzdb 2021a does have entries like Europe/Ljubljana that are aliases 
> for Europe/Belgrade. However, these are not present in the 
> zone1970.tab file that lists primary tzdb identifiers. As I believe 
> I've mentioned earlier on this mailing list, at some point I should 
> get around to moving those links to the 'backward' file since they're 
> present only for backward-compatibility with earlier tzdb guidelines.
>
>
> Come to think of it, instead of continuing to put this off let's do 
> it. This shouldn't affect most distros, which use the default setup 
> with 'backward'; if anybody's not using 'backward' now's as good a 
> time as any to start using it, if one cares about compatibility.
>
> So I installed the attached proposed patches into the development 
> version of tzdb on GitHub. The last patch adds a comment about Kosovo 
> at the appropriate alphabetical location in the 'europe' file.

This patch looks good in principle.

I wonder if it's worth mentioning specifically that the Asia/Istanbul 
and Europe/Nicosia links have moved to 'backward' too.

As you write though, most distributions install 'backward' and won't 
notice either way.

Philip

-- 
Philip Paeps
Senior Reality Engineer
Alternative Enterprises