TimeZone Updater Tool/Project, where would we put it?

[Stephen Colebourne]

To take the discussion in a different direction, the original
intention of JSR-310 was that time-zone updates should be delivered as
modular jar files. Developers would just use their favorite tooling
(maven/gradle etc) to add the new tzdb jar file to the module path,
and hey-presto the tzdb data would be updated.

Early versions of JSR-310 code had all of this working, although I'm
not certain whether it still does. (JSR-310 was introduced before the
module system, so there is likely to be some work needed). The
versioning system does still exist though. ie. the JDK can have
multiple versions of the tzdb loaded and pick the latest. See
ZoneRulesProvider and TzdbZoneRulesProvider for the code that may or
may not need tweaking (it uses ServiceLoader).

A tool that patches the JDK installation seems rather an old fashioned
approach compared to a modular jar one. That said, there are issues
around data other than the tzdb rules themselves, eg. the name of a
zone, that might trip up a modular jar file approach.

Does anyone else think a modular jar file approach is worth pursuing instead?

Stephen


On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 at 10:03, Andrew Leonard
<andrew_m_leonard at uk.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
> Not had a lot of interest in contributing this yet, so was going to ask
> the question a different way. If we were to contribute it where would we
> put it?
> - As part of the JDK project?
> - Create its own project? and associated mercurial repo?
> - Add to an existing other tooling project?
>
> Thanks
> Andrew
>
> Andrew Leonard
> Java Runtimes Development
> IBM Hursley
> IBM United Kingdom Ltd
> internet email: andrew_m_leonard at uk.ibm.com
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