On 10/18/21 09:08, Sharef Mustafa via tz wrote:

Thanks for posting this P Chan

the only formal news source is a post on the facebook page of the Palestinian government <https://www.facebook.com/PMO.Palestine/posts/4831752950190822> which says:

" بدء العمل بالتوقيت الشتوي اعتبارًا من منتصف ليلة الخميس/ الجمعة 29/ 10" which P Chan exactly translated it to: "Palestine winter time will start from midnight 2021-10-29 (Thursday-Friday)."

Thanks for the heads-up. This announcement is unclear, as it could mean that the transition is: (A) from Thursday 10-28 24:00 to Thursday 10-28 23:00. And it could also mean that the transition is: (B) from Friday 10-29 01:00 to Friday 10-29 00:00. For Palestine's transition to winter time, tzdb currently uses method (A) for 2014 and 2019, and method (B) for 2015-2018 and for 2020-2021. Do you know which is the correct method for the year 2021? If method (B) is correct, tzdb is already OK; if not, we'll need to update tzdb. Surely it would be better for everyone concerned if Palestine were consistent about using method (A) or method (B). I worry that the actual transition rule has not been specified clearly and that tzdb has been interpreting ambiguously-specified rules somewhat at random. Thank you for any info you can provide to clear this up.

On 10/18/21 10:01, Tim Parenti wrote:

So either way the recent announcement is interpreted, it's looking like our current prediction (from Saturday 10-30 01:00 to Saturday 10-30 00:00) will be wrong, and would change the clocks 24 or 25 hours too late.

Thanks for noticing that. I guess we'll need a new release soon no matter what. For now I installed the attached patch. However, before we release it would be good to confirm that the transition will occur Thursday 10-28 from 24:00 to 23:00 (which is what the attached patch guesses), instead of on Friday 10-29 from 01:00 to 00:00.