Re: RFC: should GMime use GDateTime instead of time_t?

[Peter Bloomfield <PeterBloomfield bellsouth net>]

Hi Jeff and Albrecht:

On 03/26/2017 10:53:58 AM Sun, Albrecht Dreß wrote:
> Hi Jeff:
>
> Am 26.03.17 14:50 schrieb(en) Jeffrey Stedfast via balsa-list:
> > Currently, g_mime_message_get_date() is somewhat awkward in that it returns a time_t but also has a int 
> > *tzone parameter that gets set to the timezone offset.
>
> I wonder if this interface actually works for all cases, as the docs for 2.6 say "int *tz_offset: pointer to 
> timezone offset (in +/- hours)".  But some time zones do not have an integral offset relative to utc (e.g. India = 
> 5 hours 30 minutes - for ~1.2 * 10**9 people!).
>
> > I only just recently even discovered that Glib had a GDateTime and thought *maybe* it might be a better 
> > alternative, but figured I'd check with the 2 main projects using GMime to see what your thoughts were.
> >
> > Would it make your tasks easier? Harder?
>
> It would require changing the message object in Balsa to use a GDateTime * instead of a time_t.  I think the 
> changes are rather limited and not difficult.  The work of a rainy November afternoon... ;-)
>
> > I personally don't mind the time_t API, especially since it's unlike you'll be adding/subtracting time from 
> > it and there are already ways of formatting date strings with it (for display purposes).
>
> GLib comes with g_date_time_format().  Or use g_date_time_to_unix() which has the advantage to be 
> year-2038-safe on 32-bit boxes (if any of them still work in 2038).
>
> > I haven't really played with GDateTime so I don't know how useful it would really be. Hoping that maybe some of you guys *have* 
> > and will perhaps have an opinion one way or the other (e.g. "for the love of God, yes! Please use GDateTime!" or 
> > "Oh hellllllll no!". If not, I'll probably just leave it as it is.
>
> I strongly vote for using GLib types wherever possible.  I.e. not only GDateTime, but also gint instead of 
> int, gssize vs. ssize_t, etc. etc.  Even using types from e.g. stdint will not always be sufficient, as there 
> are some broken compilers around which do not fully implement C standards.  Like M$VC, which doesn't even 
> comply fully with IEC9899:1999.  So let the GLib guys deal with that crap...
>
> Just my €0.01, though...  Peter?  Pawel?

This looks quite straightforward, although I didn't try to estimate the time involved. Balsa already uses 
GDateTime in a few places, so it's not unknown to us :-) It uses time_t in many more places, and that 
probably won't get changed without external prodding like yours!

Best,

Peter