Subject: Re: bug#55163: 29.0.50; master 4a1f69ebca (TICKS . HZ) for current-time broke lsp-mode

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 16:17:38 -0700

On 5/2/22 10:58, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> The internal Lisp function would need an efficient way to get a file's
>> timestamp. It can't do that if there's no C primitive to do it.
> And this is relevant to this discussion because...?
> 
> The discussion, to remind you, was whether we should provide_public_
> APIs to obtain individual attributes

If the concern is the public nature of the API then yes, we could 
provide a private function file--attributes that would act like 
file-attributes but be able to obtain individual attributes.

>>> What we have established is that Emacs apps need to be able to measure
>>> time intervals, not that they need a monotonic clock.  Functions for
>>> measuring time intervals can be built on functions that return
>>> monotonic clock time, but they can also be built on other bases that
>>> have very little with actual time stamps.
>> What other bases would these be? Monotonic clocks are relatively
>> portable; other methods that come to mind are not.
> As long as such a method exists on a platform, that platform can make
> do without high-resolution wallclock time.

Sorry, I'm still lost. What methods would these be? Are they methods 
that one can already use in portable Elisp code?