Re: On time64 and Large File Support

[Paul Eggert]

On 3/2/23 02:38, Andreas Schwab wrote:
> There is a huge difference between them: time_t has a flag day, off_t
> doesn't.

Absolutely right.

Another thing that's different is that when off_t grew in the 1990s, 
people said they needed a wider off_t RIGHT NOW, because programs 
wouldn't work on large inputs otherwise. The pressure to build with 
_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 was large enough that a working consensus was 
reached pretty quickly to build that way.

In contrast, people don't urgently need a wider time_t until 2038. So 
the "let's be organized about this and do things systematically" 
sentiment wins, and because other things take priority time_t conversion 
never gets done. (Or possibly the "either the platform or I will be dead 
by 2038 so let's do nothing" sentiment wins, which is another 
seemingly-good reason to do nothing....)