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Date:      Sat, 2 Jun 2001 13:14:04 -0700
From:      "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>
Cc:        Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>, David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-standards@bostonradio.org
Subject:   Re: time_t definition is wrong
Message-ID:  <20010602131404.M31257@dragon.nuxi.com>
In-Reply-To: <200106022005.f52K5FR04823@earth.backplane.com>; from dillon@earth.backplane.com on Sat, Jun 02, 2001 at 01:05:15PM -0700
References:  <200106012318.f51NI8w38590@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <200106020823.f528N5O98998@earth.backplane.com> <20010602085237.A73968@dragon.nuxi.com> <200106021739.f52Hd9V03943@earth.backplane.com> <p05100e0fb73ee9d458f7@[128.113.24.47]> <20010602124907.G31257@dragon.nuxi.com> <200106022005.f52K5FR04823@earth.backplane.com>

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On Sat, Jun 02, 2001 at 01:05:15PM -0700, Matt Dillon wrote:
>     It is really the person making the commit (you) that has the burden 
>     of justification here, not those of us who object to it.

1.  I feel I have.  You keep saying "breakage" but aren't telling me what
    specifically it is.  You have not argued a single *functional* point
    here -- only the spelling of the 32-bit type used.

2.  We really don't operate that way around here any more.  Sad to say,
    but true.  For some reason the burdon is now on the receiver.


>     Explain why you
>     believe changing the long to int can be justified in light of the fact
>     that Solaris and Linux use long (and all the other reasons I iterated!).

NetBSD, OpenBSD, and HP-UX uses 32bit types for time_t.


>     Your reasoning so far is extremely weak and not very forward looking.

Forward looking is to make time_t 'long long'.  We can do that if you
like.

>     It is certainly not sufficient to make such a basic change to a core
>     type stick I think!

I do have backing from another committer for this.  In fact one that we
look to for guidance on these things.


>     It also seems to me that nobody has really considered what is going to
>     happen 15 years down the line when the importance of being able to 
>     write 203x-safe software becomes paramount.

Well, if you are concerned about 15 years from you, you would be pushing
for a 'long long' time_t, not a `long' one.


>     The linux/Solaris/everyone-else crowd uses 'long' precisely because
>     they assume (rightly) that by the time it matters cpu's will be 64 bit
>     native.

Uh.. I've got $100 that says embedded CPUs will still be 32-bit, not 64.
FreeBSD does have a goal of running on some embedded CPUs -- PPC and
StrongARM.

-- 
-- David  (obrien@FreeBSD.org)

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