Paul Goyette <paul@whooppee.com> writes:
On Sat, 21 Jul 2018, Tom Lane wrote:
This seems unduly pessimistic to me. If zic writes an additional file into the target directory, that would probably automatically get included by most packagers --- it'd look no different from a new zone file. And I doubt many packagers are left who haven't set things up to just automatically include new zone files. ...
NetBSD would not automatically install an additional file. The build process is very explicit about which files get copied to the build's destination directory; it is also very selective in what files it includes in the .tgz "distribution set" files. Manual intervention is needed to update these steps.
And your point is? Should I conclude that NetBSD users see a seriously lobotomized set of time zones, or does the packager just automatically update the distribution list every time a new file shows up there? In my former life as a packager for Red Hat, you'd list a specific set of files you expected your package to install into, say, /usr/bin -- either an unexpected addition or unexpected removal there should set off alarm bells. But the file list for tzdb's database would almost certainly just be "/usr/share/zoneinfo/*"; there is no value in expending packager brain cells on second-guessing the upstream there. Maybe NetBSD's packaging toolchain is too impoverished to do that, but I'd certainly call that a bug not a feature. regards, tom lane