[LEAPSECS] Windows 10 time

[Warner Losh]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 9:39 AM Brooks Harris <brooks at edlmax.com> wrote:

> Hopefully Linux will follow suit in some manner. This might be
> accompanied with updating POSIX time in some manner to support Leap
> Seconds..
>

The last 20 attempts to do that have failed, sadly. time_t is quite
pervasive and has a significant amount of both legacy code (which could
mostly be dealt with by transitioning to new interfaces, but not entirely
ushering in a new class of off by 37s bugs) but also it's stored in a
number of places that are impossible to change (timestamps in legacy
filesystems). It's relatively easy to mostly get the get/set time
interfaces to allow for leap seconds, but the data storage problem is a
hassle. Also, since the legacy interfaces don't really have leap seconds in
them at all, you still have all the hassles of repeating times for code
that's not been updated.

While I applaud Microsoft for strong-arming these changes through (and
taking the huge amount of time to chase down all the API implications),
there's no such driving force in Linux, BSD or any of the other Unixes,
with the possible exception of Apple and ios/osx. Google + android might be
able to get away with a change here, should Google decide to cope, but
since they already just smear I doubt the idea would get enough traction to
get the proper level of commitment organizationally to make it happen.

And, as always, I'd love for someone to do all the work and prove my jaded
cynicism wrong.

Warner
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