[tz] proposal for new tzdb versions

[Stephen Colebourne]

I agree with pretty much everyone else rejecting this proposal - Tom
and Mark explained why very clearly.

This approach will really screw up downstream processes, with many
picking up 2021b without even realising or having a chance to change
it.

Please release 2021b as 2021a plus the minimum necessary changes. The
controversial data reorganisation simply does not need a release at
this point.

Stephen



On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 19:31, Paul Eggert via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
>
> In light of the previous discussions and the fact that we need a new
> release very soon, I propose the following:
>
> * We release 2021b pretty much as-is (with the usual release
> administrivia such as updating NEWS).
>
> * We also generate a separate 2021a1 version, which is like 2021a except
> with the Samoa change that is prompting 2021b. This version recognizes
> the concerns about the number of changes to pre-1970 timestamps in
> 2021b. I'll do this by publishing a patch to 2021a, along with a patched
> tarball, on my website at UCLA.
>
> Although this is effectively a fork in the short term, the idea is that
> it's a small fork with the intent that we'll work together to combine
> the two approaches in later releases, taking the abovementioned concerns
> into account.
>
> There is precedent for this approach, in that when there were
> compatibility problems with earlier releases, I generated alternate
> tarballs to support downstream users while they were adapting their
> database readers. Although the two cases are not the same, generating an
> alternate distribution also has the benefit of giving us time.
>
> Although I haven't had time to read all the discussions so far (and
> email is still rolling in), I will try to take these discussions into
> account when writing the NEWS entries for the two versions.
>
> After the versions are published and the dust has settled, I hope that
> we can incorporate some of the suggestions that have been made, as we
> will then have time to implement and test them. I don't want this
> followup discussion to take a looong time, though, as the goal is to
> combine the two approaches soon.
>
> Since Samoa's rules change in less than 72 hours I plan to generate
> these new versions soon.