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yellers | 5 months ago

Hang on a second, "(...) in 2023. US/* was moved to tzdata-legacy (...)"

US/* was moved to 'backward' (the file for backward compatibility) in the tz database in 1993(!) and as such was essentially marked as deprecated long enough. https://data.iana.org/time-zones/tzdb/backward

You're telling me you didn't notice ? It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.

discuss

mynegation|5 months ago

Not only did I not notice, I have never known that country prefixes were a thing, having to deal with tzdata since 1999. I wonder if that timezone was typed in manually? I doubt Postgres 15 file contained it to begin with.

zahlman|5 months ago

> You're telling me you didn't notice ? It was...

In a large fraction of cases in the FOSS world, it comes across that the developers really do want to communicate this sort of thing, but there's no clarity on where or how they should do so. See for example various deprecations in Python packaging tools (and standards).

JdeBP|5 months ago

In this case, they did communicate it, and the aforegiven Vogon reference is a mischaracterization. The naming convention is in the current IANA doco and Eggert copy.

* https://data.iana.org/time-zones/tz-link.html#tzdb

* https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~eggert/tz/tz-link.htm#tzdb

Paul Eggert explained the continent/ocean plus largest city naming convention on a WWW page almost a quarter of a century ago. The WWW page was so well publicized that you can find its URL baked into at least four of the O'Reilly animal-cover books from the early 2000s.

* https://web.archive.org/web/20011023074744/http://www.twinsu...

It was explained on Usenet and on mailing lists prior to that.

rollcat|5 months ago

Then you get the reverse. I just upgraded to macOS Sonoma (yes I'm always one major version behind with Apple stuff...), and I was annoyed as heck when I had to click through "Look what's new in Calendar!", "Look what's new in Reminders!", "Look what's new in StripClubs!"... I need to use my software right now, I will not read this. Then I will forget it ever popped up, and will not read it in the future either.

cpburns2009|5 months ago

Why are time-zones even prefixed by continent? Country-prefixed time-zones make more sense because they're defined politically.

eurg|5 months ago

Cities may find themselves in other countries easier than on other continents.

umanwizard|5 months ago

In addition to what others have said, there are several examples where people disagree about which country a city is “rightfully” in.

Nobody can really find fault with Asia/Jerusalem, whereas either Israel/Jerusalem or Palestine/Jerusalem would be controversial.

hnuser123456|5 months ago

I disagree. Country borders can move. I have not heard of a city moving between continents however.