On 6/26/23 16:12, Fabio Valentini wrote:
So all this considered, I'm not sure whether this change is actually worth it, if tzdata databases of some form will likely be pulled into installs anyway.
Quoting the "Weak Dependencies Policy":
"Weak dependencies allow smaller minimal installations while keeping the default installation feature rich."
The change is worth it for minimizing container runtimes based on Fedora.
Just for clarity, a default install will always have tzdata.
I'd rather have *one* tzdata that's up-to-date and used by everything (for example, so Python and Ruby programs can actually agree what time it is).
I agree strongly with this statement.
I have worked with Patsy over the years to remove as many bundled copies of out-of-date tzdata as we can find :-)
It is important for consistency that all language runtimes have the same concept of time.
This change request does not change that.
With a weak dependency on tzdata the default installs will still have it, but someone making a specifically UTC-only container should be able to remove it.
Python, and other language runtimes should be capable of getting to a point where they operate correctly with only C.UTF-8 (no language packs) and UTC (no tzdata).