From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2016 16:09:21 GMT
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git v2.9.1
Message-ID: <20160712160921.GA2965@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqlh167tjd.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 08:41:42AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > I am not certain that there is a modern system with 32-bit time_t. We
> > know there are systems with 32-bit unsigned long, and I think that is
> > what produced the results people saw. I'd expect even 32-bit systems to
> > use "int64_t" or similar for their time_t these days.
> 
> OK.

In case it wasn't clear, I was mostly guessing there. So I dug a bit
further, and indeed, I am wrong. Linux never bumped to a 64-bit time_t
on i386 because of the ABI headaches.

That being said, I still think the "clamp to time_t" strategy is
reasonable. Unless you are doing something really exotic like pretending
to be from the future, nobody will care for 20 years. And at that point,
systems with a 32-bit time_t are going to have to do _something_,
because time() is going to start returning bogus values. So as long as
we behave reasonably (e.g., clamping values and not generating wrapped
nonsense), I think that's a fine solution.

-Peff