Bug#1040997: tzdata: remove country name symlinks from top-level directory for better organization
Package: tzdata
Version: 2023c-7
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
These directories are names of countries and contain only symlinks to elsewhere:
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Brazil/
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Chile/
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Mexico/
/usr/share/zoneinfo/US/
These country names exist in the "top-level" directory /usr/share/zoneinfo/ and are only symlinks to elsewhere:
Cuba
Egypt
Eire
GB
GB-Eire
Hongkong
Iceland
Iran
Israel
Jamaica
Japan
Kwajalein
Libya
NZ
NZ-CHAT
Navajo
PRC
Poland
Portugal
ROC
ROK
Singapore
Turkey
W-SU
There are around 200 recognized countries in the world, and there probably is a historical reason for the above countries to be mentioned by name and receive special treatment in tzdata.
If this historical reason is no longer relevant, please start gradually moving towards using as few country names in tzdata as possible, and instead use a directory for geographical region (continent or ocean) and city name inside that directory.
Please keep the top-level directory /usr/share/zoneinfo/ clean and organized. Thank you.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata/+bug/2008076 has already taken some steps towards better organizing of the tzdata files in /usr/share/zoneinfo/
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