Time64 <> gconf ?

[Geert Janssens]

On Friday 20 September 2013 07:55:44 John Ralls wrote:
> On Sep 20, 2013, at 3:34 AM, Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be> wrote:
> > John,
> > 
> > You have recently done a great job with our time handling code to
> > solve the year 38 problem in GnuCash.
> > 
> > I didn't follow it in all detail, but from what I see you have
> > switched to using time64 in many locations.
> > 
> > While converting from gconf to gsettings, I have found that there
> > are a few preferences that store time as a 32-bit int. I presume
> > that should change as well.
> > 
> > I will fix this for our gsetting backend, but I just wanted to make
> > sure I do it correctly. If I store the time preferences as gint64
> > in gsettings will that be sufficient ?
> 
> Geert,
> 
> I guess it depends on what kind of time needs to be stored; it might
> make more sense, particularly if you're just interested in a date
> rather than a date-time, to store an ISO-8601 string.
> 
I understand your point.

On the other hand I'm working from the existing code. The gconf preference is linked to a 
GncDateEdit widget. This works works with date-time values internally, even though GnuCash 
only uses the date part in the gui. If I stick the internally used value, that does simplify my 
porting work a lot, so for now I prefer to simply store a time64 in preferences.

> If you decide to use a gint64, it's clearer if you call it "time64";
> that typedef is in gnc-date.h.

This was already the case in the GncDateEdit code. The code that manages the link between 
the preference dialog and the gconf backend however used gnc_gconf_set_int() to store that 
time64 into gconf. That would obviously overflow in 2038.

It's only in that spot that I needed to know the proper way to handle value conversion.

There is no gconf function to handle a time64 value, nor is there a gsettings function for it. So 
at the border between gnucash and gsettings, I will have to call it int64, but that will only be 
right where the gsettings functions are called. Just before/after the value will be converted 
form/into a time64.

Geert