Re: Bug: Status/Summary of slashdot leap-second crash on new years 2008-2009

David Newall
2009-01-05T00:09:19Z

Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:33:41 +1030, David Newall said:
>
>
>> I don't understand why such a simple thing was unnecessarily
>> complicated. And causing crashes! Ha ha ha or what? A simple addition
>> to zoneinfo was (and still is) all that is required.
>>
>
> Something to keep in mind is that the Posix standard does *NOT* say anything
> about leap seconds - poke around in a 'struct tm' sometime.
>

I have poked, decades ago. There's nothing in struct tm that's a problem.

> That's why /usr/share/zoneinfo has separate 'posix' and 'right' subdirectories.
>
> The fun starts when software using the 'right' rules tries to interact with
> other software using the Posix rules (quite possibly running on a non-Unixy
> system that doesn't even *use* zoneinfo).
>
> Repeat after me: Not all the world is Linux.

But Linux is; and that's what we're discussing.