[Python-Dev] Stdlib and timezones, again

[Barry Warsaw]

On Oct 01, 2012, at 03:34 PM, Lennart Regebro wrote:

>On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 1. Consider TZ database updates to be bug fixes, and thus include them
>> in maintenance releases. This will keep the provided version
>> reasonably fresh for Python versions that are still in maintenance
>> mode.
>> 2. Provide a mechanism to prefer the database from PyPI.
>> 3. Provide a mechanism to prefer the OS database for platforms that
>> provide an Olson compatible interface (I briefly looked into that for
>> Windows a while back - it doesn't seem like a practical idea, since
>> Microsoft went off and did their own thing. It works for Linux and
>> other platforms that use the Olson database natively, though)
>
>I proposed 2 and 3, and I don't really see much magical side-effects with
>those.  As mentioned we can also include a database in the standardlib, but
>since that will almost always be out of date, I don't really see the point.
>It is of course only an issue on Windows, but still.

I agree.  I don't think the Python RM should have to worry about tz updates,
given how frequent or unpredictable they can be.

For OSes that provide the database, I can't think of any reason not to prefer
that, except if your OS version is no longer being maintained, and then it
seems like updating your tz database is the least of your worries.

However, if someone wants to maintain a Cheeseshop package with updates, I
can't stop them.  My biggest concern there is that eventually the maintainers
will lose interest and this package will bitrot, and then we'll have obsolete
tz info out there that people will still rely on.  Oh well, I guess.

I completely agree that just installing the Cheeseshop tz package should *not*
be enough to prefer it over the system tz data.

Cheers,
-Barry