Re: Removing locale timezone information

[Allan McRae <allan@archlinux.org>]

On 13/08/15 00:08, keld@keldix.com wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 09, 2015 at 08:52:31AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
>> keld@keldix.com wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> It's typically harder to update glibc than to update time zone data.  This 
>> is partly a matter of size (glibc's files are an order of magnitude larger 
>> than tzdata's), and partly a matter of release engineering (changing tzdata 
>> has far fewer security and reliability implications than changing glibc 
>> does).  We don't want to treat every minor daylight-saving rule change with 
>> the same urgency and thoroughness as we treat a serious security bug in 
>> glibc.  And this is why most (perhaps all) GNU/Linux distributions have 
>> decoupled tzdata from glibc.
> 
> My impression is that timezone changes are normally announced in due time
> so that they can be included in normal glibc release schedule, which
> I think is about twice a year, but irregulary. I have not been down into
> the data, tho.

I can recall a couple of occasions where there was a very short notice.
 e.g. last week, North Korea changed its timezone, effective on the 15th.

Going through the archives of tz-announce [1], shows plenty of short
notice changes.

It seems you should look at actual data before making these assertions.

Allan

[1] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz-announce/