Time-zone database issues

[Stephen Colebourne]

On Thu, 25 Oct 2018 at 09:37, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/22/2018 11:25 PM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> > The IANA time-zone database [1] provides details of how time-zones
> > change over time. The latest release - 2018f - cannot be processed
> > successfully by the current JDK parser [2].  A workaround exists
> > however unlike previous cases of tzdb incompatibility, this time it
> > makes sense for the JDK parser and API to be changed.
>
> I don't think so. This patch is in the development version of tzdata:
>
> mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/attachments/20181018/a1734c98/0001-Avoid-25-00-in-rearguard-format.patch

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear enough. We can cope with *this*
change either by using rearguard or changing the parser. However, the
tzdb author is determined to push ahead with whatever data changes he
sees fit (calls for more tzdb backwards compatibility are rejected).
At some point, he will add an out of bounds change here that can't be
represented in rearguard or in Java. We need to make a change here to
protect ourselves from that, and to fix what is in many ways a bug in
the Java API - caused by a misunderstanding of their file format.

Stephen