Re: Y2038 - best way forward in Debian?
On Tue, Feb 04 2020, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> Arnd scanned the library packages in the Debian archive and identified
> that about one third of our library packages would need rebuilding
> (and tracking) to make a (recursive) transition. We can see two
> different possible routes to follow:
>
> A Follow a similar path to last time (rename library packages). This
> will allow us to do partial upgrades, but the cost is that a vast
> number of packages will need work to make this happen,
> *potentially* building library packages twice to allow us to
> continue both 32-bit and 64-bit time_t support forwards for a
> while. This effort will be *needed* only for the sake of our 32-bit
> ports, but would affect *everybody*.
The thing that we have to remember is that an operating system is a
platform for running software. This problem is rather thorny, because:
1) Some software is provided in only binary form and cannot be
recompiled
2) Some software can be recompiled but makes assumptions about the size
of variables, may use int instead of time_t, and other assorted
messiness
3) Some software is going to break now, due to forward-looking time
calculations, and for others, it may be fine (or nearly so) even past
2038 due to timekeeping being only ancillary to its purpose. For
instance, I have some old games that are binary-only and really don't
care what time it is.
This option #1 sounds like a significant effort (because not only would
we need two versions of libraries, but also of include files). But it
certainly passes the "correctness" test better than your option #2.
John
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