[tz] The Y2038 problem is 20 years away

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Fri Jan 19 21:27:16 UTC 2018


Is there anything more that tzcode should be doing about this looming 
deadline? Should we be discouraging builds on platforms with 32-bit 
signed time_t?

Currently, zic.c and tzfile.h do the right thing even if time_t is 32 
bits, and do not use time_t at all. So zic should be safe even if time_t 
is a signed 32-bit integer. However, all the other programs and 
libraries that we build generate code that will not work for timestamps 
after 2038, if built with 32-bit signed time_t.

It wouldn't be hard to change tzcode to refuse to compile non-zic C 
modules on platforms with 32-bit signed time_t; is that something we 
should consider doing?


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