[tz] On ISO country for timezones (Re: Classifying IDs)

Stephen Colebourne scolebourne at joda.org
Thu Oct 7 15:47:22 UTC 2021


On Thu, 7 Oct 2021 at 16:29, Clive D.W. Feather <clive at davros.org> wrote:
> I don't see the word "deprecated" anywhere in the theory file. Who is
> saying that IDs should be deprecated and what do they mean by that term?

When an ID is deprecated, the project is sending a message that users
should not use that ID and should use something else instead.

The concept of backwards compatibility is different - it simply keeps
whatever IDs we have, without assigning any additional semantic
meaning.

This matters because recent events indicate that some IDs like
Europe/Oslo or Atlantic/Reykjavik are viewed by some list members as
being deprecated by tzdb. ie. that downstream users are only using
tzdb correctly if they use the region IDs like Europe/Berlin or
Africa/Abidjan.

The distinction here may seem subtle at first glance, but it is very
real. As an application developer I want to be relying on the fully
supported public API of the underlying project, not the deprecated
parts (even if there is no intention to remove them). I want to squash
the negativity around IDs like Europe/Oslo or Atlantic/Reykjavik and
have them fully embraced as part of the main supported API of tzdb.

Stephen


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