[Python-Dev] Add UTC to 2.7 (PyCon sprint idea)

[exarkun at twistedmatrix.com]

On 03:43 pm, dirkjan at ochtman.nl wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 16:26, Tres Seaver <tseaver at palladion.com> 
>wrote:
>>Because timezones are defined politically, they change frequently. 
>>pytz
>>is released frequently (multiple times per year) to accomodate those
>>changes:  I can't see any way to preserve that flexibility if the
>>package were part of stdlib.
>
>By using what the OS provides. At least on Linux, the basic timezone
>data is usually updated by other means (at least on the distro I'm
>familiar with, it's updated quite often, too; through the package
>manager). I'm assuming Windows and OS X would also be able to provide
>something like this. I think pytz already looks at this data if it's
>available (precisely because it might well be newer).

pytz includes its own timezone database.  It doesn't use the system 
timezone data, even on Linux.

Jean-Paul