Version 2005r of The Olson Time Zone Database Published

The 18th version of 2005 (2005r) of the Olson Time Zone Database was published on 2005-12-27. That's an average of a new version every 2.9 weeks. That's more than double the number of versions published during 2004. The nations of the world appear to be in the mood to tinker with their time zone rules.

I was not at all expecting another version in 2005 after version 2005q, so I didn't even check until today.

I have generated a new version of the Chronos Time Zone Repository, and published it on the Chronos web site. Here's the direct link to download the Chronos Time Zone Repository.

The Chronos Installation Instructions explain how to do all the following yourself: 1) Obtain the latest version of the Olson Time Zone Database, and 2) Generate a new version of the Chronos Time Zone Database based on an updated version of Olson.

Here are the instructions:

The source files from which the Chronos time zone rulesets, localization policies and UTC leap second schedule are generated reside in the Chronos Time Zone Repository at the location <path-prefix>/time-zones/Olson-zoneinfo-sources. Arthur David Olson publishes updated versions of the source data about once every month (some countries decide de novo every year what their daylight saving policy will be, and of course there’s always some set of countries every year that decide to change their rules.)

To generate the Chronos Time Zone Repository de novo, or to ensure you are using the latest version of the Olson Time Zone Database, fetch the Olson source files from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/, extract/install them into <path-prefix>/time-zones/Olson-zoneinfo-sources, and then run the Chronos Time Zone Compiler by evaluating "OlsonTZDBRulesetCompiler processTimeZoneRules", thereby generating a new version of the Chronos Time Zone Repository. This procedure can also be used to generate a “de novo” version of the Chronos Time Zone Repository, which may be necessary when you do not already have a version of the Chronos Time Zone Repository, and are unable to access the latest version from the Chronos web site [http://www.chronos-st.org/images/time-zones.zip].

Notes:

• You must install the Chronos-Utilities bundle in order to run the Chronos Time Zone Compiler


• The Olson time zone source files are packaged as a zipped tar file in the ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ folder. The name of the file has the form tzdataYYYYv.tar.gz, where YYYY is the 4 digits of the year and v is a lower-case letter of the English alphabet that indicates the version index within the year (so that the first version in the year 2006 would be 2006a, the second version would be 2006b, and so on.) The last version of the file for 2005 has the name tzdata2005r.tar.gz, and contains the version of the database commonly referred to as 2005r.


• The value of <path-prefix> currently used by a Chronos image can be discovered by evaluating “ChronosSystemFacade current resourcePathPrefix.” If the value is the empty string or nil, then <path-prefix> is the current working directory (the absolute path for which can be discovered by evaluating “ResourcePath defaultDirectory.”)

See the installation instructions for more information about how to set the <path-prefix>.

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• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site