[Python-Dev] Stdlib and timezones, again

[Guido van Rossum]

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Oct 02, 2012, at 12:18 AM, 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).
>
> Why wouldn't the stdlib just ship with that emulator by default then?  If your
> OS doesn't have a system database, then you `pip install pytz` ftw.

I think those are all suggestions included in Nick's intention. The
main points are that (a) pytz and some not-too-ancient Olson database
are included by default, (b) vendor distributions can tweak the
packaging so that the platform's copy of the Olson database is used
automatically; (c) users not benefitting from such vendor support can
update the database as easily as "pip install pytz" (though not
necessarily with that specific command).

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