Re: Configuring for 64-bit integer date/time storage?

Thomas Lockhart <thomas@fourpalms.org> writes:
> 1) For the ./configure command line option, does
> --enable-integer-datetimes seem OK, or could someone suggest a better
> choice? --enable-integer-datetimes is a longer string than any of the
> other options, so a less wordy possibility may be better.

I'd suggest --enable-bigint-datetimes, or possibly
--enable-int8-datetimes, to make it clearer that 64-bit-int support
is needed.

A more interesting question is which way should be the default; might it
make sense to default to bigint datetimes on machines where it's
possible to do so?  Without performance info it's probably too soon
to decide, though.

> 2) Actually using integer date/time storage depends on whether 64-bit
> integers are really supported. So although they may be enabled, it may
> not be supported. Should ./configure error out at that point, or should
> things gracefully (silently?) configure to use the existing floating
> point implementation? See (3).

No strong feeling here, but I suspect Peter will say that it should
error out.

> 3) ./configure checks for several different styles of 64-bit integers to
> see what is actually supported. But it does not control whether an
> overall "yes we have some kind of 64-bit integer" flag gets defined. So
> detecting an inconsistancy in enabling 64-bit integer storage on
> machines without 64-bit integers seems to be out of the scope of
> ./configure. Correct?

No.  configure must define either HAVE_LONG_INT_64 or
HAVE_LONG_LONG_INT_64 to get the int8 support to work.  If neither gets
defined, you should conclude that bigint datetimes won't work.
        regards, tom lane