zic's new -b option supports a way to control data bloat and to
test for year-2038 bugs in software that reads TZif files.
'zic -b fat' and 'zic -b slim' generate larger and smaller output;
for example, changing from fat to slim shrinks the Europe/London
file from 3648 to 1599 bytes, saving about 56%. Fat and slim
files represent the same set of timestamps and use the same TZif
format as documented in tzfile(5) and in Internet RFC 8536.
Fat format attempts to work around bugs or incompatibilities in
older software, notably software that mishandles 64-bit TZif data
or uses obsolete TZ strings like "EET-2EEST" that lack DST rules.
Slim format is more efficient and does not work around 64-bit bugs
or obsolete TZ strings. Currently zic defaults to fat format
unless you compile with -DZIC_BLOAT_DEFAULT=\"slim\"; this
out-of-the-box default is intended to change in future releases
as the buggy software often mishandles timestamps anyway.
zic no longer treats a set of rules ending in 2037 specially.
Previously, zic assumed that such a ruleset meant that future
timestamps could not be predicted, and therefore omitted a
POSIX-like TZ string in the TZif output. The old behavior is no
longer needed for current tzdata, and caused problems with newlib
when used with older tzdata (reported by David Gauchard).
zic no longer generates some artifact transitions. For example,
Europe/London no longer has a no-op transition in January 1996.
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