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Re: Removing locale timezone information
- From: keld at keldix dot com
- To: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs dot ucla dot edu>
- Cc: Marko Myllynen <myllynen at redhat dot com>, GNU C Library <libc-alpha at sourceware dot org>, libc-locales at sourceware dot org
- Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2015 16:50:27 +0200
- Subject: Re: Removing locale timezone information
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <556F23C9 dot 3030500 at redhat dot com> <20150603203430 dot GC15814 at www5 dot open-std dot org> <55715DB2 dot 2010500 at redhat dot com> <20150806175226 dot GD28963 at www5 dot open-std dot org> <55C51D35 dot 8060406 at cs dot ucla dot edu>
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