On 2022-10-14 00:10, Bradley White wrote:
> Perhaps a goal should be a public (in the repo), comprehensive test suite
> that verifies all the options, in all their combinations?
Although the tests could certainly be more extensive, I doubt whether it
would be practical to test all option combinations as I count about four
dozen options now, many with more than two possibilities.
That's a problem, isn't it. I'd proffer that too many options to test means too many options, period.
And the non-visibility of "the tests" means that we "downstream users" are never going to be as effective in catching problems as you might be expecting. We also can't contribute to the tests.
One step we can easily take is to improve the comments to warn about
this particular problem, so I installed the attached.
Fat TZif files work around incompatibilities and bugs in some
TZif readers, notably older ones that ignore or otherwise
mishandle 64-bit data in TZif files; however, fat TZif files
may trigger bugs in newer TZif readers.
[I'm not sure I would characterize the inability of an old reader to handle a new format as a "bug", but OK.]
So, to handle old readers I need fat TZif files, and to handle new readers I need to avoid fat TZif files. That places folks who want to handle all readers in an untenable position.