[Python-Dev] Stdlib and timezones, again (original) (raw)

Dirkjan Ochtman dirkjan at ochtman.nl
Mon Oct 1 11:16:28 CEST 2012

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 10:47 AM, Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com> wrote:

A year is no age for a Python installation. A customer of mine has one website developed in 2003, still running on the same server. It runs Python 2.3, I don't remember which version, but I'd be surprised if it is 2.3.7 from 2008.

Right. If they don't keep their Python up-to-date, why would they bother with their tzupdate?

My point is that there is not much of a difference in the incentive for upgrading your timezone data whether an initial version of it came with Python or not. Having to manually install it might make you slightly more aware that it helps if you upgrade it once in a while, but it seems more likely to be a fire and forget type of operation, in which case it's basically the same as shipping a version of the timezone data with Python (which is much easier, of course).

To put it crudely, you seem to think that most developers keep careful track of what packages they need for their apps and actively assess the risk for upgrading each of the packages involved. On the other hand, I would assume more developers just get something working and then fix any bugs that come up.

Cheers,

Dirkjan

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