Guy Harris wrote:
I.e., how soon can various vendors - including *but not limited to* Apple and Google, given that there are also a number of significant computing devices out there that run neither Android nor iOS (and without which a lot of those Android and iOS machines won't be able to get very much interesting stuff from the Interwebs) - deploy mechanisms to update time zone files without having to spin an entire OS release just to note that Elbonia is changing to start using DST?
"Mechanisms" here includes both "a way by which an update can be pushed to machines, preferably without requiring a reboot" and "a way by which the vendor's process can treat a time zone data update as being more lightweight than a full OS release". As per my earlier mail, Apple, at least, have demonstrated that they can distribute other less-than-a-full-OS release update.
I think the upcoming tzdist protocol is a good way to update local tzdbs automatically, without interaction of an OS vendor, and with out having to roll out "firmware" or "system" updates just to get an updated version of the tzdb. Of course there is a daemon required to check for new versions and download the data, and eventually the runtime libraries need to be modified to become aware of update TZ rules on the fly, without reloading the libs or so. I'm not sure how the runtime libraries handle this right now, i.e. if tzdb updates are supplied as software updates. Martin