Re: regression failure - horology

Joe Conway <mail(at)joeconway(dot)com> writes:
> I'm seeing a regression failure on the horology test on two different
> machines. I'd venture a guess that it is related to this change:
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/2003-02/msg00166.php

It seems to be a problem with signed vs unsigned 8-byte integer
timestamps. Now that I look at it, the patch actually advertises this:

When timestamps are stored as eight-byte integers (a compile-time
option), microsecond precision is available over the full range of
values. However eight-byte integer timestamps have a reduced range
of dates from 4713 BC up to 294276 AD.

which seems to make it rather foolish to include horology tests for
dates past 294276 AD.

John, you need to rethink this. Regression tests that fail with
--enable-integer-datetimes will not do. Is it even a good idea to claim
a range of dates up to 5874897 AD? The 8-byte-int representation is
probably the wave of the future. As such, anything it can't do is
not something we want to commit to supporting.

regards, tom lane