On 30.09.2012 20:18, Gregory P. Smith wrote:
On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Benjamin Peterson
wrote: 2012/9/30 Xavier Morel
: But at worst, an outdated unicode database will be missing data right?
Doesn't an outdated timezone db have the risk of returning *incorrect* data?
Unicode updates also include corrections; however, it seems there are not significant enough or about obscure enough scripts that not many notice. :)
We never hear anyone complain because the corrections are not for English or other "western" languages that the majority of us speak. ;)
Regardless, I think including a version of the database on windows releases makes sense. Update it on a best effort basis before each .x minor release. The documentation can make it clear that it is a changing database how to use an updated version with your application.
One additional thing I'd like to see: Don't let the successful importing of a 'pytzdata' module be the only way to get an updated tz database. Create an API for someone to supply one themselves at runtime that is cleaner than shoving something into sys.modules['pytzdata']. And define in which order they'll be used:
priority: 1) api call supplying tz data to the process. 2) pytzdata module if it exists 3) tz data from the underlying operating system 4) error.
I disagree on this order, at least for Linux systems. the tzdata database is well managed on major Linux distributions and should be used for this reason. Matthias