On 26 October 2015 at 21:50, Bradley White <bww@acm.org> wrote:

On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
Is this just something to let people know whether they have an up-to-date version of the tzdb files or not?

Yes, although I think of it simply as let people know what version of a tzdb file they have. (Whether that is the latest version is a separate question.)

I would even propose an additional self-identification step: include the zone name in tzdb file. Then you could tell, for example, where /etc/localtime came from.

I'd love to see both of these, they're something we wanted when I wrote the Qt support for time zones. Writing a cross-platform / cross-distro library you quickly learn how hard it can be to figure out what the system time zone is, e.g. for translations of names, or so a calendar app can embed it in a n event invitation. We have workarounds for most distros, but having it in the file itself would make it so much easier. We also have users writing calendar apps who would like to know metadata about the tzdb the system uses, i.e. version, release date, etc.

John.