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Re: Removing locale timezone information


On Fri, Aug 07, 2015 at 02:03:49PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> keld@keldix.com wrote:
> >I thing tz data changes are not very frequent
> 
> No, they're reasonably common: about ten times a year.  For example, 
> yesterday North Korea announced they're changing to +0830 on August 15 and 
> we'll generate a new tzdata release before then.  We can't reasonably 
> expect glibc releases that often or so quickly.
> 
> Quick turnaround is important here.  For example, between the time that a 
> new tzdata release is announced, and the time my Ubuntu desktop is 
> automatically updated with the new data, can be a matter of hours.  (I'm 
> not doing anything special; I'm just an ordinary Ubuntu user in this 
> regard.)  This is helpful becausee countries sometimes don't give us much 
> notice.  Again, not something suited to glibc's schedule.

So glibc has no way of making quick corrections appear in distros?
I think most other critical software has a path to have eg security fixes
happen very fast in distros.

> > Both your examples are for countries with two timezones
> 
> Actually more than two, depending on which version of tzdata you're using. 
> China has also had Asia/Chongqing, Asia/Harbin, and Asia/Kashgar in past 
> versions.  It may well have more than two in the future.
> 
> > I guess that one of them are the one that the majority will use.
> 
> True for China and Germany today, but not for the US, Canada, or Russia.  
> And in several other countries (Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, ...) 
> a significant minority of users won't want the majority's preference.  
> We're talking about a lot of users here, not just a few exceptional cases.

Agreed, but even for the minority users having just a dozen or so likely
TZ specs to choose from is a good improvement from having
to choose from a long list of TZs  or even choosing by clicking on a map,
as previously explained.

Best regards
keld


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