Re: [HACKERS] Something for the TODO list: deprecating abstime and friends

> On Dec 13, 2017, at 12:07 AM, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 2017-07-17 12:54:31 -0700, Mark Dilger wrote:
>> These types provide a 4-byte datatype for storing real-world second
>> precision timestamps, as occur in many log files.
> 
> These seem to be getting less common IME, most products have higher
> resolution these days.  If this were nicely written, maintainable, and
> documented code my position would differ, but it really isn't.
> 
> 
>> That said, I am fully aware that these are deprecated and expect you
>> will remove them, at which time I'll have to keep them in my tree
>> and politely refuse to merge in your change which removes them.
> 
> It'd be way less work to package abstime as an extension if you want to
> do so.

After proposing to submit a patch for the secondstamp datatype (which
I mentioned upthread), Robert objected to the idea of data on disk changing
meaning, which was a part of the idea that Tom seemed to be willing to
accept.  Since I couldn't get both Tom and Robert on board with any
particular design, I silently withdrew from the development of any such
patch.

This has happened on several proposals I have made on this list over
the years.  Unless there is fairly unanimous support from the committers,
I don't bother following through with a proposal, given the improbability
of it getting accepted.

I would happily finish and submit that prior proposal if there were general
agreement that it is a good design.  I have no interest in making abstime
into an extension, however.

mark