> pthreads will default to use the real time clock. In order
> to have them use the monotonic timer, you have to setup
> a condition variable attribute: See the man-page for
> pthread_condattr_setclock().

I'll look at that, but I'm not thrilled at the propect of complicating
the code paths so much. There may be systems where CLOCK_MONOTONIC is
unavailable, others where pthread_condattr_setclock() is unsupported,
etc.

> The code won't get more complicated if you refactor the time
> querying logic into a separate function (which the compiler can then
> inline as necessary).

It does get more complicated, since there are several paths
(clock_gettime() and then a fallback on gettimeofday()).
I'm not talking about complexity in the executable but about maintenance
complexity.