Dropping /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix and /usr/share/zoneinfo/right from tzdata

[Benjamin Drung]

On Mon, 2023-01-09 at 19:01 +0100, Benjamin Drung wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> The tzdata package ships /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/ (for Coordinated
> Universal Time) and /usr/share/zoneinfo/right/ (for International Atomic
> Time). The files in /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/ are identical to their
> counterpart in /usr/share/zoneinfo/. The tzdata package converts the
> configured posix/* and right/* timezones to their unprefixed variant on
> every package upgrade (e.g. it changes "posix/Europe/Berlin" to
> "Europe/Berlin").
> 
> Is there anybody actually using /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix or
> /usr/share/zoneinfo/right?

Debian bug #498171 indicates that there might be users.

> Aurelien and I assume that probably nobody is using them. We plan to
> drop both directories. If nobody speaks up, I will remove them in the
> coming weeks from the Ubuntu tzdata package prior to the feature freeze.
> After the Debian 12 "bookworm" release, we will remove it from Debian.

I changed my opinion: Instead of dropping right/* move these files into
a separate binary package tzdata-right which will not be installed by
default.

-- 
Benjamin Drung
Debian & Ubuntu Developer