Y2038 (was: Re: Userapi, Reflection)

[Matthew Dillon]

:On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:18:01 -0800 (PST)
:Matthew Dillon <dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
:
:>    What I would also like to do is 'fix' system calls which return structures,
:>    like gettimeofday(), fstat(), and so forth... instead of returning
:>    structures they would return a resource array.  The personality code
:>    would then scan the resource array to load the C structures that the user
:>    program expects.
:
:Ah, speaking of which, are there any plans to address the Y2038 bug in DFBSD?
:
:This mechanism would be an excellent first step towards it.
:
:-Chris
:(singing the Beatles' "When I'm 64" :)

    This has been discussed many times on the FreeBSD lists.  The FreeBSD
    folks would prefer to simply wait for all architectures to become 64 bits.
    e.g. for IA32 to die out.  I would prefer to make time_t a 64 bit 
    quantity.  But both 'solutions' have serious problems.  time_t is assumed
    to be a 'long' in a great deal of third party code.

    Another alternative would be to create a new 64 bit API or to supply a
    compiler option that allows time_t to be 64 bits for those programs
    that won't barf on 64 bit time_t's.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>