[Python-Dev] Stdlib and timezones, again

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:15 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 15:10:06 +0200
> Dirkjan Ochtman <dirkjan at ochtman.nl> wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> > Can't we simply include the Olson database in Windows installers?
>>
>> We probably can, but the problem is that it's updated quite often (for
>> example, in 2011, there were about 14 releases; in 2009, there were
>> 21). So you'd want to have a mechanism to override the data that is
>> included in the stdlib.
>
> Probably, but for most purposes I would guess a 2-year old database is
> still good enough? After all, you don't see many people complaining
> about the outdated Unicode database that is hard-wired in past Pythons.

An out-of-date timezone database will bite someone at some point.
They'll be running code that expects some locality to be on/off DST
when it isn't, and some customer will be confused or annoyed. I
suspect most people won't much care, though. It's only a few who'd
explicitly upgrade their tz database.

ChrisA