[Python-Dev] Draft PEP for time zone support.

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> Le Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:11:15 -0600,
> Brian Curtin <brian at python.org> a écrit :
>>
>> I don't think it's all that bad to include a small script on Windows
>> which runs every few days to check PyPI, then present an option to
>> update the info. This is what Java itself is doing anyway.
>
> I don't get why people are so obsessed about updating the timezone
> database. Really, this is not worse than having a vulnerable OpenSSL
> linked with your Python executable. Purity does not bring any
> advantage here.

Bingo. As long as the recipe to update is clear, most users can ignore
this, because the countries about which they care don't change DST
rules often enough for it to matter. When it does matter, they'll know
(changing the DST rules is something that local news sources tend to
track :-) and they can update their software when stuff they use
starts getting the time wrong. Obviously sysadmins responsible for
large numbers of users can make this into a routine, and ditto people
who run services. But these folks are professionals and are good at
automating tasks like this.

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