On 07/01/2015 18:49, Paul Jarc wrote:
> In this case I'm not dealing with the current time. How would I
> convert between an arbitrary system clock value stored in a
> time_t/struct timeval/struct timespec, and a TAI[N] value stored in a
> tai[n]_t?
The fast answer is: if t is the number of seconds in your arbitrary
system clock value (be it a time_t or a tv_sec field), you can get
the corresponding TAI value in a struct tai a with
tai_from_sysclock(&a, (uint64)t + TAI_MAGIC)
Then you have to copy micro/nanoseconds by hand, if applicable.
I realize this is inconvenient, but arbitrary system clock values
is exactly what I don't want to deal with: I want to hide the system
clock from applications and provide them with TAI time instead,
suitable for computations no matter what your system clock setting is.
I understand that a program such as rw-touch may need those
conversions though. If you insist, I'll try to come up with
something more intuitive.
> Do you recommend calling tain_init() at program startup? If the
> program does a significant amount of work before the first call to
> tain_now(), will it matter whether the initialization happens before
> or after that work?
Honestly, I never call tain_init(). It's auto-run at the first
tain_now() invocation anyway. And most of all, it's only ever useful
with --enable-monotonic, which doesn't really make sense if you're
using linear time in your applications, which is probably the case if
you're skalibs-aware; and if in one program you really want
CLOCK_MONOTONIC, you can use tain_clockmon_init(&offset) at start to
store the offset, then tain_clockmon(&a, &offset) to store the current
TAI time (according to CLOCK_MONOTONIC) into a.
If you call tain_init, or tain_clockmon_init, it does not matter at
all when you do it as long as it's before the first call to tain_now
or tain_clockmon.
The only important thing is that you make sure that your idea of the
current time is reasonably accurate, so call tain_now() after doing
significant work. But most programs that need to keep track of time are
definitely IO-bound, so it really only makes sense to call tain_now()
right after blocking primitives and nowhere else. I usually call
tain_now_g() once before my main loop, to initialize the global stamp,
then iopause_g() is the only timekeeping I need.
--
Laurent
Received on Wed Jan 07 2015 - 20:00:59 UTC