In the thread "datetime module enhancements" Guido and others said that it is unpythonic to limit timestamp (seconds since Epoch) to an signed int with 32bit.

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.devel/86750

I've made a patch that introduces a new type Py_time_t as a first step to increase the size of time stamps. For now it's just an alias for time_t.

  typedef time_t Py_time_t;

I'm proposing to change time_t in two steps:

Python 2.6:
Replace every occurrence of time_t by Py_time_t and give third party authors time to change their software

Python 2.7 / 3000:
Change Py_time_t to a signed 64bit int on all platforms and provide the necessary workaround for platforms with a 32bit time_t.

After a shallow review, I think the patch is incorrect. There must be places where a Py_time_t may get truncated to a time_t; in these places, no silent truncation should occur, but an exception be raised. I can find no place in the patch where this happens.

Yes, you are right. There is no place where the ptch checks for truncating - because the patch doesn't change the size of time_t. The current patch defines Py_time_t is an alias for time_t so 3rd party authors can update their software to use Py_time_t instead of time_t in Python 2.6.

Also it gives me time to study the impacts on systems with a 32bit time_t and to get feedback from core developers. May we take the discussion to python-ideas? I've started a thread yesterday.

I reject my own proposal.