Markus Kuhn writes:
The bulk of UNIX software also uses a fixed formula to break the time_t value down to a decomposed yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss time.
That ``formula'' is isolated in a few lines of code that are invoked by the rest of the system. New calendar rules, new time-zone systems, etc. don't require changes except in those few lines of code. In contrast, there are thousands of lines of code that add or subtract time counters to handle real-time differences. This code wouldn't work correctly if the UNIX kernel were modified to follow the POSIX rules. You claim that nobody would notice, but I've seen several complaints about wobbly clock behavior from people who use xntpd to reset their time counters after leap seconds. The bottom line is that I'm running several UNIX systems that provide accurate civil-time displays and accurate real-time differences; I only had to fix a small amount of code. Your systems, on the other hand, have inaccurate civil-time displays and inaccurate time differences; your unimplemented ``solutions'' would require massive code changes. ---Dan