[tz] Wrong symlinks with BACKWARD=backward PACKRATDATA=backzone

[Paul Eggert]

On 2024-03-07 01:35, Benjamin Drung via tz wrote:
> On Wed, 2024-03-06 at 23:46 -0800, Paul Eggert wrote:
>> On 3/6/24 13:29, Benjamin Drung via tz wrote:
>>> the Debian/Ubuntu package uses BACKWARD=backward PACKRATDATA=backzone.
>>
>> Why is that? In other words, what bug report prompted the use of
>> PACKRATDATA? That may help figure out a reasonable fix, if any is needed.
>>
> 
> This is the bug report:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata/+bug/2003797

I'm afraid that URL doesn't help figure out a fix, as it's not an end 
user bug report. It's an announcement that you decided to use 
PACKRATDATA, inspired by the long discussion on the tz mailing list. 
This discussion reflected a philosophical disagreement that has little 
practical effect on end users.

If you'd like to take on the burden of maintaining an higher-effort (and 
more-political) approach based on an alternative maintenance philosophy, 
it'd be helpful to propose specific changes in "git format-patch" form. 
These should be independent of the main data, so presumably they would 
patch the "backzone" file. It might help to try these changes out on 
Ubuntu first, by patching there and seeing how well it works there.