<<On Wed, 20 May 1998 09:47:42 -0400, "Olson, Arthur David" <OLSONA@dc37a.nci.nih.gov> quoted a message from D. J. Bernstein:
The practical effect is that many systems slipped by a second in 1997, and will probably slip by another second at the end of 1998.
FreeBSD follows the PCTS/xntpd model of leap second observance (which is to say, ``it doesn't''). We actually care more about NTP working than PCTS, so until NTP is redesigned to tick TAI, or the NTP daemon redesigned to deal with a leap-second-cognizant operating system, we're stuck with it. In any case, if the user enabled leap seconds, that means they already have the source and were capable of editing the Makefile and reinstalling the timezone data files. It would not be particularly difficult for us to add an additional installation option, ``install timezone source files'', just as we do for the sendfail config kit, but this would not be meaningful to 99% of our new-installation users, and those who care are the sort who would install the source anyway. If we really wanted to deal seriously with leap seconds, we would probably add the functionality to libcalendar. There are essentially three ways one would want to use this information: - for any given time, compute the value of TAI-UTC - for any given time, compute the difference between UTC and POSIX time - convert a specific UTC, POSIX, or TAI time into one of the other systems I can't speak for other systems. -GAWollman -- Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick