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Re: Is Y2038-proofing in a glibc roadmap somewhere?
- From: Joseph Myers <joseph at codesourcery dot com>
- To: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs dot ucla dot edu>
- Cc: Zack Weinberg <zackw at panix dot com>, Albert ARIBAUD <albert dot aribaud at 3adev dot fr>, <libc-alpha at sourceware dot org>
- Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2015 20:38:05 +0000
- Subject: Re: Is Y2038-proofing in a glibc roadmap somewhere?
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <20150618150835 dot 315775b7 dot albert dot aribaud at 3adev dot fr> <20150618132533 dot GG22285 at port70 dot net> <20150618154948 dot 714738c2 dot albert dot aribaud at 3adev dot fr> <20150709100932 dot 3dd2cbf7 dot albert dot aribaud at 3adev dot fr> <alpine dot DEB dot 2 dot 10 dot 1507221418360 dot 21570 at digraph dot polyomino dot org dot uk> <20150803104325 dot 2ec7b9ea dot albert dot aribaud at 3adev dot fr> <CAKCAbMgABZf4bU0FNu1-9bJtM3aS6mPxiZH+J5yk-EsBPReWiA at mail dot gmail dot com> <alpine dot DEB dot 2 dot 10 dot 1508031708110 dot 22507 at digraph dot polyomino dot org dot uk> <55BFBAC6 dot 8040803 at cs dot ucla dot edu>
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Joseph Myers wrote:
> > The evidence is that libraries affected by the _FILE_OFFSET_BITS value are
> > more likely nowadays to be built with _FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 than
> > _FILE_OFFSET_BITS=32 on GNU/Linux distributions.
>
> Even at the time _FILE_OFFSET_BITS was introduced, I thought that it was a
> mistake for it to default to 32. An understandable mistake, but a mistake
> nonetheless. What a hassle it was to arrange for every application to #define
> _FILE_OFFSET_BITS to 64!
>
> Can we avoid the mistake this time around, and have _TIME_BITS default to 64?
I think that's a recipe for the addition of _TIME_BITS=64 support not
happening at all or being delayed by several years; changing the default
is a lot trickier than adding new interfaces, and requires significant
distribution work to coordinate ABI changes for shared libraries.
Work towards changing the _FILE_OFFSET_BITS default - such as obtaining
and implementing a consensus on whether to deprecate the fts interface or
add a 64-bit version of it, and fixing (maybe bit-by-bit rather than all
at once) bug 14106 - would be welcome, and a prerequisite for being able
to change the _TIME_BITS default.
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com