WebAssembly / WebAssembly/WASI

Have an api to get the international atomic time (TAI)?

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P-clocks S-inactive
Dominant language
Rust
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Description

I assume that the wall clock api returns UTC time? TAI is basically UTC without leap seconds and associated problems. Now it has been decided to stop using leap seconds for the forseeable future due to the issues they cause for many computer systems so maybe it isn't as important to support anymore, but IMHO suspending usags of leap seconds is only making the problem worse in the future once the difference with terrestrial time has increases sufficiently as it is no longer being tested. Using TAI should avoid these issues if/when leap seconds are reintroduced. Linux supports it using CLOCK_TAI, on other systems I guess manually adding leap seconds would be necessary for implementing this.

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing WASI wall-clock API and the issue's discussion of Linux CLOCK_TAI. Define the cross-platform behavior and leap-second semantics for a TAI API, then document what support and tests would establish that the result is complete.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux
Domain
api, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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