Re: [PATCH v2] linux: Use 'long int' for timespec tv_nsec on x32 (BZ #16437)

[Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>]

* Arnd Bergmann:

> On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 1:47 AM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>> On 12/10/21 16:08, Rich Felker wrote:
>> > this is a bug fix for a serious conformance problem
>> > that's going to have people writing wacky code to work around x32
>>
>> In my experience it's not a significant conformance issue. I've had very
>> little trouble writing user code that's portable to x32 struct timespec.
>> Generally speaking the code just works anyway; in the few cases where
>> there might have been trouble the fixes were trivial and non-wacky.
>>
>> Anybody writing portable struct timespec code has more important
>> problems than this (e.g., Solaris 11 'stat' can set st_mtim.tv_nsec to a
>> negative integer, something that's caused me far more hassle). And
>> anybody porting to x32 has waaaaayy more important problems than this.
>>
>> > if anyone even actually cares about x32
>>
>> If the x32 user community (small as it is) doesn't care about this issue
>> then we all have better things to do than worry about it.
>
> Would it help to resume the thread about removing the kernel support,
> followed by removing glibc support? The last time Andy brought this up
> was three years ago[1], and it was borderline then with about five users
> saying they actually used it at the time and several kernel developers
> speaking out in favor of removing the kernel bits.
>
> The timing probably isn't bad either, with Debian 11 and Ubuntu 22.04
> (both of which include marginal support for x32) being supported for
> years to come. Anyone building their own stuff can rely on linux-5.15lts
> and an existing glibc release to do the same.

I don't see x86-64 x32 causing us significant trouble on the glibc side.
I have worked on some x86-64-specific enhancements, and covering both
word sizes wasn't too hard because everything else is so similar.  But I
am very emphatically not an x32 user.

Much higher on my annoyance list are alpha, hppa, ia64.

Thanks,
Florian