The rule definition in the Olson database. A tool called zic
parses these rules, instantiates all individual transitions in a given timeframe and then stores these instances in a binary format that ships with most UNIXes and the python zoneinfo
module. All clients just parse those binary files with the specific transition dates, which do not contain any 'meta' information about the rules behind the transition dates.
The data I was able to extract from zoneinfo
instances, as long as the plain-python implementation was used instead of the C-module.