[tz-announce] 2016b release of tz code and data available

March 15, 2016

      The 2016b 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. A last-minute note: some 
2016b data entries cause zic implementations derived from tz releases 2005j 
through 2015e to issue warnings like "time zone abbreviation differs from POSIX 
standard (+03)". These warnings should not otherwise affect zic's output and can 
safely be ignored on today's platforms, as the warnings refer to a restriction 
in POSIX.1-1988 that was removed in POSIX.1-2001. One way to suppress the 
warnings is to upgrade to zic derived from tz releases 2015f and later.

   Changes affecting future time stamps

     New zones Europe/Astrakhan and Europe/Ulyanovsk for Astrakhan and
     Ulyanovsk Oblasts, Russia, both of which will switch from +03 to +04 on
     2016-03-27 at 02:00 local time.  They need distinct zones since their
     post-1970 histories disagree.  New zone Asia/Barnaul for Altai Krai and
     Altai Republic, Russia, which will switch from +06 to +07 on the same date
     and local time.  Also, Asia/Sakhalin moves from +10 to +11 on 2016-03-27
     at 02:00.  (Thanks to Alexander Krivenyshev for the heads-up, and to
     Matt Johnson and Stepan Golosunov for followup.)

     As a trial of a new system that needs less information to be made up,
     the new zones use numeric time zone abbreviations like "+04"
     instead of invented abbreviations like "ASTT".

     Haiti will not observe DST in 2016.  (Thanks to Jean Antoine via
     Steffen Thorsen.)

     Palestine's spring-forward transition on 2016-03-26 is at 01:00, not 00:00.
     (Thanks to Hannah Kreitem.) Guess future transitions will be March's last
     Saturday at 01:00, not March's last Friday at 24:00.

   Changes affecting past time stamps

     Europe/Chisinau observed DST during 1990, and switched from +04 to
     +03 at 1990-05-06 02:00, instead of switching from +03 to +02.
     (Thanks to Stepan Golosunov.)

     1991 abbreviations in Europe/Samara should be SAMT/SAMST, not
     KUYT/KUYST.  (Thanks to Stepan Golosunov.)

   Changes to code

     tzselect's diagnostics and checking, and checktab.awk's checking,
     have been improved.  (Thanks to J William Piggott.)

     tzcode now builds under MinGW.  (Thanks to Ian Abbott and Esben Haabendal.)

     tzselect now tests Julian-date TZ settings more accurately.
     (Thanks to J William Piggott.)

   Changes to commentary

     Comments in zone tables have been improved.  (Thanks to J William Piggott.)

     tzselect again limits its menu comments so that menus fit on a
     24x80 alphanumeric display.

     A new web page tz-how-to.html.  (Thanks to Bill Seymour.)

     In the Theory file, the description of possible time zone abbreviations in
     tzdata has been cleaned up, as the old description was unclear and
     inconsistent.  (Thanks to Alain Mouette for reporting the problem.)

Here are links to the release files:

   ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/tzcode2016b.tar.gz
   ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/tzdata2016b.tar.gz

The files are also available via HTTP as follows:

   http://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzcode2016b.tar.gz
   http://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2016b.tar.gz

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

   http://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/tzcode-latest.tar.gz
   http://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/tzdata-latest.tar.gz

   ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzcode-latest.tar.gz
   ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/tzdata-latest.tar.gz

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 70161f48bc212678c58490f7faabc286c90b2a05 
dated Sat Mar 12 17:30:14 2016 -0800 and tagged '2016b' in the experimental 
github repository at <https://github.com/eggert/tz>.

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

53f7405fd0466f5acc5d1dd590546abb6e3f4240d6a78ce7e965908d9310e8b8686c8fbe887947c513a4de65e3e3fc038d64215a330267397f37e6efce71f0b8 
  tzcode2016b.tar.gz
6d30215ba3289a5b85a632d635b76a54c3c08d97e426d6bd89f83c4efd252e43959593b21cca9d2b185f3845358908946cc308365accbee94f126ad3057cf838 
  tzdata2016b.tar.gz

Here are the GPG checksums for the release files:

[tz-announce] 2016b release of tz code and data available

Paul Eggert