On 2022-11-12 10:50, Bruno Haible wrote:
I'm saying "tiny" because we are still 15 years away, and new releases of the (not many) affected packages are likely to come in the next 1-2 years.
Not so "tiny", I'm afraid. My department is still running a server with libraries and executables that are over 17 years old. I have asked for it to be decommissioned, but there are backward compatibility concerns. (The OS is still supported by its supplier, and we install security patches, most recently the day before yesterday.)
Admittedly my situation differs from embedded environments where _TIME_BITS=64 is likely to make a difference 15 years from now. Unfortunately the situation in embedded environments is often worse.
My assessment is based on the understanding that Zack's proposed change is essentially [a small change to the code]
Yes, that's my understanding too. Unfortunately the Autoconf change would have to be more complicated than that, since documentation and comments would have to change accordingly. And the change to Gnulib code would be considerably more complicated; this inevitably follows from any significant change we make in this area to Autoconf on Savannah. I would rather we spent our limited resources moving forward not backward.
