[bug #44519] Use int64_t for time_t and an earlier epoch than 2000-01-01 00:00:00

[avrs-admin]

Thu 12 Mar 2015 04:11:29 PM CET

This feature request applies to avr-libc 1.8.1. (the bug tracker does not list this version)

avr-libc contains an implementation of the POSIX/ISO C time API. The documentation states that, due to limitation of the 8bit AVR architecture, some corners were cut and the API is limited in respect to ISO C.

This generally ok, but time_t is represented by an unsigned 32bit integer. This runs contrary to efforts to modernize the C time API. Most modern C runtime library implementors have opted to use a signed 64bit integer, which avoids the "Year 2038 Problem". avr-libc avoids this problem differently, at a cost: The time epoch is defined as midnight Jan 1 2000, and time_t is an unsigned type. This allows for dates up to Feb 2136 to be represented, but earlier dates than Jan 2000 are invalid.

While doing calculations on 64bit quantities bears a performance cost on an 8bit architecture, that cost is relatively small for most operations. For what it's worth, the same applies to 32bit quantities anyway. Also, modern compiler handle the "emulation" of 32bit and 64bit arithmetic automatically.

With these things in mind, I request that the avr-libc time implementation be changed to use a signed 64bit type to represent a timestamp (time_t), and the epoch be changed to an earlier date than Jan 1 2000, such as the Unix epoch (midnight Jan 1 1970) or a different commonly used one (Jan 1 1900, Jan 1 1601). Allowing for negative timestamps to represent valid dates is also a possibility.

This issue was migrated from https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?44519