Hi, I'd like to establish what's going to happen about packaging my CPAN module Time::OlsonTZ::Data for OS distros. I'm writing to (as far as I can tell) the current Debian and Fedora maintainers of DateTime::TimeZone packages, and I'm CCing the relevant perl.org mailing list. We're now getting close to replacing the current DateTime::TimeZone with a rewrite that will use Time::OlsonTZ::Data as its source of Olson-derived timezone data.
Iain Arnell raised an issue about T:OTZ:D not coming in a true source form. I've got a new version of the wrapper system that I think resolves this. <http://www.fysh.org/~zefram/tmp/Time-OlsonTZ-Data-0.20120201.tar.gz> is a test version of the module distribution, which bundles (the important parts of) the Olson database source, and the automation to build the tzfiles, as well as bundling the prebuilt tzfiles. I can't not bundle the tzfiles, because this has to support Perl users in places where the Olson build code can't be used (because it's Unix-specific and requires a C compiler), but you can now throw away the tzfiles and build from proper source. This version of the module should be a better base from which to customise the module, where you need to. Please let me know what you think of this arrangement. I'll be releasing a new version of T:OTZ:D every time there's a new Olson database release, as I have done for the past year and a half. (The current version of DateTime::TimeZone is also on this release schedule, but the rewrite won't be, having delegated the volatility to T:OTZ:D.) Sometimes Olson database updates are urgent, requiring promulgation on a timescale of days, and T:OTZ:D updates will inherit that urgency. In Debian, T:OTZ:D ought to be handled through the volatile-data mechanism. Is that OK? In Fedora, I don't know what you do for such things. Please discuss. Somewhat interacting with the above, you have the option to apply the T:OTZ:D automation to a new version of the Olson database independently of my releases. Iain Arnell suggested extending the existing tzdata package to build a matching Time/OlsonTZ/Data.pm this way, not needing a separate package for the module. You'd also have it point at your existing tzfiles in /usr/share/zoneinfo, rather than having a separate copy. That's quite feasible with the new form of the module distribution. -zefram