DST law changes in Fiji, Namibia, Northern Cyprus, Sudan, Tonga,
and Turks & Caicos Islands. Historical corrections for Alaska, Apia,
Burma, Calcutta, Detroit, Ireland, Namibia, and Pago Pago.
DST law changes in Chile, Haiti, and Mongolia. Historical corrections for
Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Liberia, and Spain.
The IANA crew continue their campaign to replace invented time zone
abbrevations with numeric GMT offsets. This update changes numerous zones
in South America, the Pacific and Indian oceans, and some Asian and Middle
Eastern zones. I kept these abbreviations in the tznames/ data files,
however, so that we will still accept them for input. (We may want to
start trimming those files someday, but I think we should wait for the
upstream dust to settle before deciding what to do.)
In passing, add MESZ (Mitteleuropaeische Sommerzeit) to the tznames lists;
since we accept MEZ (Mitteleuropaeische Zeit) it seems rather strange not
to take the other one. And fix some incorrect, or at least obsolete,
comments that certain abbreviations are not traceable to the IANA data.
DST law changes in northern Cyprus (new zone Asia/Famagusta), Russia (new
zone Europe/Saratov), Tonga, Antarctica/Casey. Historical corrections for
Asia/Aqtau, Asia/Atyrau, Asia/Gaza, Asia/Hebron, Italy, Malta. Replace
invented zone abbreviation "TOT" for Tonga with numeric UTC offset; but
as in the past, we'll keep accepting "TOT" for input.
DST law changes in Turkey. Historical corrections for America/Los_Angeles,
Europe/Kirov, Europe/Moscow, Europe/Samara, and Europe/Ulyanovsk.
Rename Asia/Rangoon to Asia/Yangon, with a backward compatibility link.
The IANA crew continue their campaign to replace invented time zone
abbrevations with numeric GMT offsets. This update changes numerous zones
in Antarctica and the former Soviet Union, for instance Antarctica/Casey
now reports "+08" not "AWST" in the pg_timezone_names view. I kept these
abbreviations in the tznames/ data files, however, so that we will still
accept them for input. (We may want to start trimming those files someday,
but today is not that day.)
An exception is that since IANA no longer claims that "AMT" is in use
in Armenia for GMT+4, I replaced it in the Default file with GMT-4,
corresponding to Amazon Time which is in use in South America. It may be
that that meaning is also invented and IANA will drop it in a future
update; but for now, it seems silly to give pride of place to a meaning
not traceable to IANA over one that is.
DST law changes in Kemerovo and Novosibirsk. Historical corrections for
Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Morocco. Asia/Novokuznetsk and Asia/Novosibirsk
now use numeric time zone abbreviations instead of invented ones. Zones
for Antarctic bases and other locations that have been uninhabited for
portions of the time span known to the tzdata database now report "-00"
rather than "zzz" as the zone abbreviation for those time spans.
Also, I decided to remove some of the timezone/data/ files that we don't
use. At one time that subdirectory was a complete copy of what IANA
distributes in the tzdata tarballs, but that hasn't been true for a long
time. There seems no good reason to keep shipping those specific files
but not others; they're just bloating our tarballs.
DST law changes in Azerbaijan, Chile, Haiti, Palestine, and Russia (Altai,
Astrakhan, Kirov, Sakhalin, Ulyanovsk regions). Historical corrections
for Lithuania, Moldova, Russia (Kaliningrad, Samara, Volgograd).
As of 2015b, the keepers of the IANA timezone database started to use
numeric time zone abbreviations (e.g., "+04") instead of inventing
abbreviations not found in the wild like "ASTT". This causes our rather
old copy of zic to whine "warning: time zone abbreviation differs from
POSIX standard" several times during "make install". This warning is
harmless according to the IANA folk, and I don't see any problems with
these abbreviations in some simple tests; but it seems like now would be
a good time to update our copy of the tzcode stuff. I'll look into that
soon.
DST law changes in Cayman Islands, Fiji, Moldova, Morocco, Norfolk Island,
North Korea, Turkey, Uruguay. New zone America/Fort_Nelson for Canadian
Northern Rockies.
DST law changes in Egypt, Mongolia, Palestine.
Historical corrections for Canada and Chile.
Revised zone abbreviation for America/Adak (HST/HDT not HAST/HADT).
DST law changes in the Turks & Caicos Islands (America/Grand_Turk) and
in Fiji. New zone Pacific/Bougainville for portions of Papua New Guinea.
Historical changes for Korea and Vietnam.
Most zones in the Russian Federation are subtracting one or two hours
as of 2014-10-26. Update the meanings of the abbreviations IRKT, KRAT,
MAGT, MSK, NOVT, OMST, SAKT, VLAT, YAKT, YEKT to match.
The IANA timezone database has adopted abbreviations of the form AxST/AxDT
for all Australian time zones, reflecting what they believe to be current
majority practice Down Under. These names do not conflict with usage
elsewhere (other than ACST for Acre Summer Time, which has been in disuse
since 1994). Accordingly, adopt these names into our "Default" timezone
abbreviation set. The "Australia" abbreviation set now contains only
CST,EAST,EST,SAST,SAT,WST, all of which are thought to be mostly historical
usage. Note that SAST has also been changed to be South Africa Standard
Time in the "Default" abbreviation set.
Add zone abbreviations SRET (Asia/Srednekolymsk) and XJT (Asia/Urumqi),
and use WSST/WSDT for western Samoa.
Also a DST law change in the Turks & Caicos Islands (America/Grand_Turk),
and numerous corrections for historical time zone data.
DST law changes in Morocco; Tokelau has relocated to the other side of
the International Date Line; and apparently Olson had Tokelau's GMT
offset wrong by an hour even before that.
There are also a large number of non-significant changes in this update.
Upstream took the opportunity to remove trailing whitespace, and the
SCCS-style version numbers on the individual files are gone too.
Egypt and Palestine. Added new names for two Micronesian timezones:
Pacific/Chuuk is now preferred over Pacific/Truk (and the preferred
abbreviation is CHUT not TRUT) and Pacific/Pohnpei is preferred over
Pacific/Ponape. Historical corrections for Finland.
