[tz-announce] 2019a release of tz code and data available

March 25, 2019

      The 2019a release of the tz code and data is available. It reflects the 
following changes, which were either circulated on the tz mailing list or are 
relatively minor technical or administrative changes:

   Briefly:
     Palestine "springs forward" on 2019-03-30 instead of 2019-03-23.
     Metlakatla "fell back" to rejoin Alaska Time on 2019-01-20 at 02:00.

   Changes to past and future timestamps

     Palestine will not start DST until 2019-03-30, instead of 2019-03-23 as
     previously predicted.  Adjust our prediction by guessing that spring
     transitions will be between 24 and 30 March, which matches recent practice
     since 2016.  (Thanks to Even Scharning and Tim Parenti.)

     Metlakatla ended its observance of Pacific standard time,
     rejoining Alaska Time, on 2019-01-20 at 02:00.  (Thanks to Ryan
     Stanley and Tim Parenti.)

   Changes to past timestamps

     Israel observed DST in 1980 (08-02/09-13) and 1984 (05-05/08-25).
     (Thanks to Alois Treindl and Isaac Starkman.)

   Changes to time zone abbreviations

     Etc/UCT is now a backward-compatibility link to Etc/UTC, instead
     of being a separate zone that generates the abbreviation "UCT",
     which nowadays is typically a typo.  (Problem reported by Isiah
     Meadows.)

   Changes to code

     zic now has an -r option to limit the time range of output data.
     For example, 'zic -r @1000000000' limits the output data to
     timestamps starting 1000000000 seconds after the Epoch.
     This helps shrink output size and can be useful for applications
     not needing the full timestamp history, such as TZDIST truncation;
     see Internet RFC 8536 section 5.1.  (Inspired by a feature request
     from Christopher Wong, helped along by bug reports from Wong and
     from Tim Parenti.)

   Changes to documentation

     Mention Internet RFC 8536 (February 2019), which documents TZif.

     tz-link.html now cites tzdata-meta
     <https://tzdata-meta.timtimeonline.com/>.

Here are links to the release files:

   https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzcode2019a.tar.gz
   https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2019a.tar.gz
   https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdb-2019a.tar.lz

As usual, links to the latest release files are here:

   https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/tzcode-latest.tar.gz
   https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/tzdata-latest.tar.gz
   https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/tzdb-latest.tar.lz

Links are also available via plain HTTP, and via FTP from
ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases with the same basenames as above.

Each release file has a GPG signature, which can be retrieved by appending 
".asc" to the above URLs. Copies of these signatures are appended to this message.

This release corresponds to commit 14c73382cf95efd5f189379427b7b37ca22b9eff 
dated 2019-03-25 22:01:33 -0700 and tagged '2019a' in the development GitHub 
repository at <https://github.com/eggert/tz>.

Here are the SHA-512 checksums for the release files:

7cc76ce6be4a67c3e1b2222cb632d2de9dabb76899793a938f87a1d4bb20e462cabdae9e3b986aaabaa400795370510095d236dbad5aff4c192d0887f0ecedf5 
  tzcode2019a.tar.gz
d8eb5b2b68abee08bd2b0d2134bce85b5c0aee85168e9697a607604ed5be7d1539ac60fda9b37e0c9c793ef6251978bc250563a0af59497fde775499964bb5aa 
  tzdata2019a.tar.gz
5971d53ceb8cd9e0723d0694c2dca5a3781b9c84bdfef2eb324e9f94fb0b25da263cf59b5429bc77e12e549130aab8c8b1755c34d62bf672c184210c629328f2 
  tzdb-2019a.tar.lz

Here are the GPG checksums for the release files:

PS.  If your tzdata parser does not yet support negative DST offsets,
this particular release's data entries are also available in a
rearguard-format tarball and signature that does not contain such
offsets.  This is intended to be a temporary transition aid for these
parsers.  The URLs are:

https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~eggert/tz/release/2019a/tzdata2019a-rearguard.tar.g...
https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~eggert/tz/release/2019a/tzdata2019a-rearguard.tar.g...

with the following SHA-512 and GPG checksums:

1ebca45c43aaed76fcb8894a5e8321975cc74a272a9e7b83b2f4ca9d5c2c0b4a4de276bd019d95468ce7e6b88d8afdab70b17580071b8a54cdf2218c2bb8a069 
  tzdata2019a-rearguard.tar.gz

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[tz-announce] 2019a release of tz code and data available

Paul Eggert