Architecture independence could be maintained by adding an "endian" element to the header. But readers currently in the field wouldn't use the information, so they'd mishandle files with the new byte ordering.

A file naming convention (for example, suffixing "-bigendian" or "-littleendian") is another path.

Given the small effect on run time, sticking with the current ordering seems best.

@dashdashado

On Fri, Mar 8, 2024, 12:21 PM Tom Lane via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:

Bill Seymour via tz <tz@iana.org> writes:
> Could there be a "Version 4" of the compiled TZif files in which the ints
> and time_ts have the correct endianness for the platform on which they're
> installed?

This'd break the fairly widespread habit of installing the files under
/usr/share (which is supposed to contain only architecture-independent
files). I think you'd need a *very* convincing performance argument
to support changing that.

regards, tom lane