[Datetime-SIG] Timezone database

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 6:31 PM, Felipe Ochoa <felipe.nospam.ochoa at gmail.com
> wrote:

> [Branching from The BDFL's take]
>
> There are a few additional issues which I'm not sure are included in this
>> discussion or not:
>> - A unified API for accessing an up-to-date timezone database. This has
>> been discussed in the past, and we couldn't find a solution that satisfied
>> all requirements (the main problem being different platform expectations
>> IIRC), but it's probably worth it trying again.
>
>
> The current solution proposed in the PEP is to have platforms
> with /usr/share/zoneinfo use that as long as they want. For other platforms
> Python would ship with a built-in copy (roughly speaking) of the database.
> There would then be separate tzdata-update package on pypi that can be `pip
> install`ed to update the timezone database whenever the user feels the need
> to do so (because /usr/share/zoneinfo is no longer receiving updates or
> because it doesn't exist)
>
> What are the unsatisfied requirements of this design?
>

It looks like Windows (where a lot of Python users actually are -- just not
those who are most active in Open Source) is left out in the cold here. I'm
sure Windows by now has a timezone info database of its own that is kept
up-to-date whenever you install Microsoft updates, and Python should use
that in preference over a Python-specific database which is only updated
when the user updates Python (which may be never).

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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