[LEAPSECS] What's the point?

[Tony Finch]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2011, Paul Sheer wrote:

>

> Have you looked at the Olson source?


Yes.


> In any case, whatever solution ye'all come up with should not

> merely be In Principle. It should come as a patch on some real code.


No patches are needed.

If leap seconds are abolished then POSIX's model of time becomes correct.
Olson's tzcode (in the standard configuration) works on top of POSIX time
so it ignores leap seconds. It will continue to work exactly as it does
now. The process for updating the tzdata files will remain exactly as it
currently is.


> I think what you will find is that there is no technical difference

> between moving leap seconds into TZ, and eliminating leap seconds and

> adjusting TZ.


There is already code to handle leap seconds like timezones, but it is
incompatible with POSIX and large amounts of other code and with NTP and
other time broadcast systems.

Tony.
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