System.currentTimeMillis check in System class during startup.

[Martin Buchholz]

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:05,  <jon.vanalten at redhat.com> wrote:
> Hi Martin,
>
> Thanks for your input.
>
> ----- "Martin Buchholz" <martinrb at google.com> wrote:
>
>> It's not at all clear that one cannot solve the y2038 problem on
>> systems with a 32-bit time_t.
>> That's what Michael Schwern is trying to do here:
>> http://code.google.com/p/y2038/
>> His code is available.
>>
>
> Unfortunately unless I am missing something this example is not solving the y2038 problem for when a 32-bit system clock reaches overflow.  See:
>
> http://code.google.com/p/y2038/wiki/HowItWorks
>
> It is simply allowing for representations of future times beyond 2038.  Java already has this.

The JDK appears to implement currentTimeMillis by simply calling
gettimeofday and using the time_t values in that directly, without any
additional cleverness.  But I thought the whole point of the y2038
project is to provide the additional cleverness that you can conjure
up a 64-bit time_t on a system that only has a 32-bit time_t.

Martin