On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 10:42 PM, St�phane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr> wrote:

On Jun 12, 2012, at 5:51 AM, Eliot Miranda wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 7:15 PM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com> wrote:
> Do we all agree that standardizing on the Unix Epoch is the way to go?
>
> No :)

Why?

If it ain't broke don't fix it. �We recently agreed that the Squeak epoch was well-defined, i.e. the start of the 20th century in GMT. �This is clear if you read the SMalltalk-80 V2 sources. �The reason advanced for changing to Unix was that the Squeak epoch is not well-defined. �That argument is incorrect.

Further, the Squeak epoch is embedded in the VMs, in their answering both seconds and microseconds from the epoch. �So there's work involved in getting rid of it. �

�

As far as I can see changing it is pointless wasted effort.

>
> The
> argument on the squeak list seemed to be:
> - the squeak epoch has a certain beauty to it, being the turn of the century
> vs
> - why reinvent the wheel? Everybody already knows what the unix epoch is
> (e.g. you can point them to Wikipedia)
>
> The full discussion is here:
> http://forum.world.st/Re-Pharo-project-Epoch-returns-local-offset-td4630581.html#a4630814
>
> The main thing is to make sure that whatever we use is based on UTC and not
> local time.
>
> So - two options
> - PharoOffset := 1 January, 1901 UTC
> - Unix offset
>
> Also, whatever we change it to (and IMHO it really needs to be changed), I
> think existing live objects from previous Pharos (e.g. that are materialized
> with fuel) may be invalid (like the recent zip/mcz consequences)
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/who-can-have-a-look-at-Issue-5913-Remove-Squeak-epoch-tp4634003p4634403.html
> Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
>
>
> --
> best,
> Eliot
>