[tz] Announcing global-tz - 2022ag (beta)

[Stephen Colebourne]

The final release is now available.
https://github.com/JodaOrg/global-tz/releases/tag/2022agtz

thanks
Stephen


On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 at 16:00, Stephen Colebourne <scolebourne at joda.org> wrote:
>
> As regular readers of this list will be aware, there is a long-running
> dispute about the contents of the IANA time-zone database. (See the
> list history for details on the dispute).
>
> As previously discussed, and given the unwillingness of the
> tz-coordinator to alter his opinion in any way, it is unfortunately
> the case that a fork of tzdb is required. I have created such a fork,
> one that is intended to be as directly derivable from iana-tz as
> possible so that iana-tz itself can still be the golden source for the
> raw data.
>
>  https://github.com/JodaOrg/global-tz
>
> The basic rules guiding the data that global-tz includes are:
> * An identifier for each region of the world where clocks have
> differed since 1970-01-01.
> * At least one identifier for each inhabited ISO 3166-1 code.
> * For these identifiers the data returned shall be the best available,
> including pre-1970 history.
>
>
> The first release of the fork is 2022ag-beta1, which will become the
> final 2022ag release tomorrow if there are no major issues or
> objections.
>
>  https://github.com/JodaOrg/global-tz/releases/tag/2022ag-beta1
>
>
> The approach taken is to copy data from backzone and put it back into
> the main files. This recreates tzdb as it would have been had the
> damaging changes since 2014 not been made. The process is *automated*.
> A GitHub Action script runs a few times a day that reads the iana-tz
> repo and runs a script that moves data from backzone to the
> appropriate main file. The result is an iana-tz compatible source code
> repo:
>
> Output tzdb source files:
>  https://github.com/JodaOrg/global-tz/tree/global-tz
>
> Comparison between iana-tz and global-tz:
>  https://github.com/JodaOrg/global-tz/compare/iana-tz...global-tz
>
> Genaration script:
>  https://github.com/JodaOrg/global-tz/blob/main/actions.txt
>  https://github.com/JodaOrg/global-tz/blob/main/GlobalTzMain.java
>
> The only maintenance that the fork should need is if iana-tz removes
> further pre-1970 history.
>
>
> Downstream consumers should be able to take the generated source code
> (either from the global-tz branch or the released tar.gz file) and
> consume it as they would have consumed an iana-tz release. Joda-Time
> and threeTen-Backport will be using global-tz going forward.
>
> Please can I ask anyone that is interested to test out the
> 2022ag-beta1 release before I make it final. PRs / Issues are welcome,
> provided they relate to aspects under the control of global-tz.
>
> thanks
> Stephen