[tz] Some thoughts about the way forward

[Paul Eggert]

On 9/24/21 10:56 PM, Jon Skeet via tz wrote:
> Might I suggest we consider creating a simply-sortable order that naturally
> allows for more than 26 releases?

The current spec does do that, since it allows 2021za as the natural 
successor of 2021z, and this kind of sequence allows as many versions 
per year as you like, and is sortable using lexicographic order.

A downside of the current approach is that the size of the version 
number grows linearly (not logarithmically) with the number of versions 
per year. I hope we don't run into a practical problem with that 
limitation....

Rearguard tarballs already start with lines like "# version 
2021a-rearguard". That's not quite the same thing as the version number 
in a tzdb distribution tarball's name, although it's closely related.