On 30.10.2016 04:42, Paul Wise wrote: > On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 4:36 AM, Ole Streicher wrote: > >> The canonical source for leap seconds is the IERS. Our current plan was >> to take the leap second list from there and build our package from this >> (as it is done in the casacore-data upstream). This guaranteed that we >> always have the actual definition (... as long as we do our updated >> package ASAP). >> >> When we switch that to tzdata, then we get the leap second from a place >> that is not strictly the original source, but may have some delay: first >> the tzdata upstream package needs to be updated, and then it needs to be >> packaged (... and possibly backported). >> >> So my question is: how safe is it to assum that this whole process is >> quick (let's say: a few weeks)? If someone works later on Stretch and >> has an outdated leap second, this could cause problems. Especially if he >> has no direct information about the actuality of the leap second >> definition (which he would have in the case of an leap second package >> taking the value directly from IERS -- we could use the date of the >> announcement as version number there). > > Where does the IERS data come from?
IERS is the instance which actually decides about the leap second, namely by this file: ftp://hpiers.obspm.fr/iers/bul/bulc/bulletinc.dat I couldn't find the original source now, but see f.e. wikipedia: "Among its other functions, the IERS is responsible for announcing leap seconds." > I think the tzdata version of the data comes from the IETF: IETF is responsible for internet standards, not for leap seconds. They will take the leap seconds from IERS. I would assume that this connection is well-established to rely on it. I was not so much questioning upstream here, but I worry a bit about the Debian package for tzdata: how sure can I be that the tzdata is actual (wrt upstream)? Best regards Ole
