[LEAPSECS] What's the point?

[Paul Sheer]

On Mon, 2011-02-14 at 16:23 -0800, Steve Allen wrote:


> Which part of this is not already implemented by the code when

> it uses the "right" zoneinfo files?

> 



1. let say we want a future where timezones are adjusted by 30 minutes
whenever the sun starts rising too late. Write this into the Olson
library as a managable feature. Think up an infrastructure. Let's see
how it would play out. If you can find a way to make it work we can
get rid of leap seconds. If you can't then so much the better. Heck,
it's a better discussion to have than "Is too!" "Is not!" "Is too!" "Is
not!" "Is too!"....

2. the ability to compute leap-sec-inclusive and leap-sec-excluded in
the same thread without changing the environment variables. This would
allow one to store both timestamps. Quite useful actually if we are
going to keep leap seconds AND have real utc AND interoperate with posix
systems. One could use this for absolute SI time diffs, as well as
future time-stamps (like calandar appointments) where you don't know in
advance how many leapsecs are coming. You would need NTP + OS to track
both posix time and TAI. No one has implemented this. It's like we are
planning IPv6 migration with no dual stack.


-paul