On time64 and Large File Support

[Paul Eggert]

On 2022-11-12 10:50, Bruno Haible wrote:
> I'm saying
> "tiny" because we are still 15 years away, and new releases of the (not
> many) affected packages are likely to come in the next 1-2 years.

Not so "tiny", I'm afraid. My department is still running a server with 
libraries and executables that are over 17 years old. I have asked for 
it to be decommissioned, but there are backward compatibility concerns. 
(The OS is still supported by its supplier, and we install security 
patches, most recently the day before yesterday.)

Admittedly my situation differs from embedded environments where 
_TIME_BITS=64 is likely to make a difference 15 years from now. 
Unfortunately the situation in embedded environments is often worse.


> My assessment is based on the understanding that Zack's proposed change
> is essentially [a small change to the code]

Yes, that's my understanding too. Unfortunately the Autoconf change 
would have to be more complicated than that, since documentation and 
comments would have to change accordingly. And the change to Gnulib code 
would be considerably more complicated; this inevitably follows from any 
significant change we make in this area to Autoconf on Savannah. I would 
rather we spent our limited resources moving forward not backward.