Overview

The Staden Package version 1999.0 is year 2000 compliant provided that it is in use on a year 2000 compliant computer system. Earlier Staden Package versions are almost certainly compliant too, although we have only checked the code in the 1999.0 release.

It is not possible in any part of the program to manually enter a date. Hence the issue of entering 2-digit years is not applicable. The programs do display dates in the headings of certain reports. The Gap4 program provided with package version 1999.0 onwards now stores dates in the "Note" structures, which are then stored in the Gap4 database. These dates are stored in the standard UNIX method, which will accurately work up to the year 2037. Where available, we use the 64-bit version of the UNIX time_t type, which means that dates beyond 2037 will also work.

Definition of year 2000 compliant

Our term "year 2000 compliant" means that the package agrees with the statement specified in the British Standards document DISC PD2000-1:1998 titled "A Definition of Year 2000 Conformity Requirements". This may be found at:

http://www.bsi.org.uk/bsi/disc/year2000.html

Testing

Despite the known fact that the package is year 2000 compliant simply due to the minimal (but accurate) use of dates, the entire source code was thoroughly searched for all date related functions.

We checked for the following data types and functions. (Most of which are not used.)

Ansi C data types

• time_t
• clock_t

Ansi C structures

• tm

Ansi C functions

• clock
• difftime
• mktime
• time
• asctime
• ctime
• gmtime
• localtime
• strftime

Posix C functions

• times

XPG4 and XPG4-Unix functions

• strptime
• utime
• utimes
• gettimeofday
• ftime
• wcsftime
• getdate

Tcl functions

• time
• clock

Unix shell commands

• date
• time
• touch

Each location containing any of the above keywords was manually checked. As expected, no changes were required.

Operating systems

As stated above the Staden Package is year 2000 compliant, but the following information will help you to check on the compliance of the relevant operating systems. We advise you to check the given URL to check that the following information is still up to date.

Digital Unix

http://www.unix.digital.com/unix/year2000/whitepaper.html

[ In the above web pages "Digital Unix" is sometimes referred to as "Compaq Tru64 UNIX" ]

Digital Unix 4.0D is year 2000 compliant. It requires a patch to the "at" command and to the "strftime()" C function. (The Staden Package will work correctly without these patches.)

Documentation on Digital Unix 4.0A to 4.0C (inclusive) is limited to how compliant the date command is. It is recommended that you upgrade to 4.0D.

Linux

There are many Linux distributions, although generally they are built up from the same components: the linux kernel; GNU system utilities; various other utilities.

RedHat, Debian and S.u.S.E all have year 2000 compliance statements. See:

http://www.uk.debian.org/News/1998/19980104
http://www.redhat.com/redhat/website.html#y2k
http://www.suse.com/PressReleases/y2k.html

The GNU system utilities and applications are being tested. A current list of year-2000 status can be found at:

http://www-th.phys.rug.nl/~schut/gnulist.html

Silicon Graphics

http://www.sgi.com/tech/year2000/

SGI state that Irix 6.5 is year 2000 compliant, although some patches are available.

Older operating systems require more patches, available from the supportfolio web site. The latest information can be found on the following sites:

http://support.sgi.com/surfzone/patches/cgi-bin/newsindex.cgi
http://support.sgi.com/surfzone/patches/browse/category.html

Solaris

http://www.sun.com/y2000/cpl.html

Solaris 7 (aka 2.7) is listed as year 2000 compliant without needing patches. Solaris 2.6 and earlier require patches. Sun make free patches available to products listed as "Year 2000 compliant at the time of release". This includes Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7. Patches for the earlier versions require a support contract.