[Python-Dev] Stdlib and timezones, again

[Tres Seaver]

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On 10/01/2012 02:48 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

> Reminder to everyone: the current state of the art for getting up to 
> date tz info for Python is "pip install pytz".
> 
> If any proposal is more complicated than that, there's absolutely no 
> point in changing anything. The version I liked best so far is for 
> Python to just install a copy of pytz automatically (shipping it in 
> the installer rather than downloading it). OS packagers would then 
> take it out (replacing it with a dependency on a pytz emulator that 
> used the system database instead).

Lennart's original proposal was to land the machinery from the current
pytz package into the stdlib, leaving the data part as a
separately-installable package.  Lennart also proposed some kind of
(maybe configurable) policy for looking up the Olson-based timezonedb.

I'm fine with Lennart's proposal, but want to argue against including any
copy of the Olson db in Python itself:  I don't believe the set of folks
who need it but can't do the equivalent of 'pip / easy_install
<lennarts-new-name-for-the-data-part>' is big enough to outweigh the
downside of bundling immediately-stale data, and hoping that everybody
else remembers to configure it out.



Tres.
- -- 
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Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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