Re: Summary of the 2038 BoF at DC17

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Steve McIntyre writes ("Re: Summary of the 2038 BoF at DC17"):
> It depends on how/where/why you're embedding 64-bit time,
> basically. If you're embedding a time_t (or a struct including a
> time_t) in your ABI and want to keep to something similar, it's worth
> waiting to see what's going to be standardised then using that.

Are you saying that if I am designing an API/ABI now I should write:

  typedef struct {
    blah blah;
    time_t whenever;
    blah blah;
  } MyAPIThing;

rather than

  typedef struct {
    blah blah;
    uint64_t whenever;
    blah blah;
  } MyAPIThing;

?  Really ?

I think that's bad advice.

I would do the latter.  Even though that means writing library code
internally that checks whether the supplied value of `whenever' fits
in whatever the system calls a time_t.

Ian.