Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:20:12 +0200 (CEST) From: Joerg Schilling <schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de> To: bde@zeta.org.au, brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de, schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de, sparc64@freebsd.org, standards@freebsd.org Subject: Re: time_t on sparc64 (fwd) Message-ID: <200310141520.h9EFKCip004956@burner.fokus.fraunhofer.de>
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>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 04:17:34 +1000 (EST)
>From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
>To: Harti Brandt <brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de>
>Cc: standards@freebsd.org, sparc64@freebsd.org
>Subject: Re: time_t on sparc64
>On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Harti Brandt wrote:
>> I just discovered that time_t is 32-bit on sparc64. One of the problems
>> is that struct timeval is defined by Posix as
>>
>> struct timeval {
>> time_t tv_secs;
>> suseconds_t tv_usecs;
>> };
>This is a bug in POSIX. In BSD, tv_secs has type long which may be,
>and is different from time_t.
No, it is definitely not a POSIX bug. POSIX is consistent and doesn't need to be
fixed. FreeBSD is inconsistent. You cannot call e.g. ctime(&t.tv_sec)
>> but _timeval.h has
>>
>> struct timeval {
>> long tv_secs;
>> suseconds_t tv_usecs;
>> }
>>
>> This means, that our timeval is not Posix compatible. What is the reason
>> for time_t not beeing a long on sparc64?
>time_t was used in some data structures whose layout shouldn't be changed
>even for new arches. Mainly in ufs in Lite2:
>%%%
>ffs/fs.h: time_t fs_time; /* last time written */
>ffs/fs.h: time_t cg_time; /* time last written */
This looks like an internal implementation problem of the FreeBSD kernel.
This is definitely bejond the scope of a standard. Please note that
introducing an inconsistent user interface is much harder to fix later than
adding a few hacks into the kernel and fix the real kernel problem later.
You have nearly 35 years left....
Jörg
--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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