Re: [TCLCORE] TIP 715 - Supported platforms and build environments for Tcl/Tk 9.1

[Keith N. <k.j...@us...>]

Hi All,

1. MAINTAINERS

On a different aspect of maintenance: the default assignees for Tcl
tickets could be updated.  The aim is that when a ticket is created, an
email is sent to an appropriate person.

I volunteer to be the default assignee for these Tcl categories:

[29] http Package
[33] Safe Base

If the ticket is more appropriate for somebody else (e.g. DKF for
cookies in [29], namespace ensembles in [33]) I will redirect the
ticket to them.

2. 2038 and 64-bit time_t

My main concern is to not make non-compliant systems unusable (yet). 
We have 13 years until the 2038 rollover, and for comparison we did not
decide to eliminate all Y2K-non-compliant systems as early as 1987.

I do not mind if the language is changed to avoid "may".

I suggest the following for Tcl/Tk on Linux/UNIX/BSD systems:

{
After 2033-01-01, Tcl 9.1 must write a warning to the system log and to
stderr whenever Tcl starts, and also if commands such as [clock], [file
mtime] are called with arguments corresponding to negative time_t or
return a result with this property, in the following circumstances:

* On a host that has no system calls for 64-bit time (e.g. 32-bit Linux
kernels earlier than 5.6)

* On a system on which the length of time_t has been tested and found
to be 32-bit (N.B. even a libc that is nominally compliant may have
been built with a compatibility option to use 32-bit time_t).

* On a system on which a 64-bit time operation has been tested at
startup and has failed (e.g. creating a file and changing its mtime to
a date in 2040).

We shall review this policy in 2032.
}

It is clearly a good thing to start thinking early about 2038, but I
hope that we do not yet need to exclude systems that use glibc older
than 2.34, or a 32-bit Linux kernel older than 5.6: the age of suchsystems can be less than four years or five years respectively.

Best wishes,

Keith.


On Fri, 2025-05-02 at 08:15 +0200, Harald Oehlmann wrote:
> I think, the main point is a maintainer, which commits to test
> releases 
> and to check failure tickets.
> 
> I have changed the TIP in this way and propose a wiki page with
> maintainers.
> 
> Is this a good idea?
> 
> About the time_t 64 bit, I did not do any modifications. For me, the 
> post had to many "may" like "a warning may be issued". Is this
> warning 
> implemented? Or shall a warning be required?
> I have no opinion on Linux and understand that it is a very moving 
> target. It may disqualify small platforms like controllers which 
> eventually do not have a RTC at all and the time is irrelevant.
> 
> Thanks for all,
> Harald
> 
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