[LEAPSECS] pick your own length of second

[Zefram]

Warner Losh wrote:

>The hard part is getting the API right that expects UTC since there's

>no unambiguous encoding for the leap second.  You have to break some

>rule to get the job done.


If your kernel is capable of ticking correctly through a leap
second, it probably provides the extended clock API (ntp_adjtime)
for NTP, which provides enough information to unambiguously
decode the UTC time.  The paper describing the mechanism is at
<http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/database/memos/memo96b.ps>, and
there are many clues acquired by bitter experience in the code at
<http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/ZEFRAM/Time-UTC-Now-0.008/lib/Time/UTC/Now.xs>.

-zefram