They're bumping it up so that if you're doing something silly (like using an unsigned integer to store the ID), you can find out and fix it. For an automatically incrementing ID, using a signed integer makes no sense, so this is a good chance for shortsighted developers to find and fix their bugs. An overflow will only happen if the developer of a given app has made a careless mistake.
All Twitter is doing is triggering the event that will break careless developers' apps on a Friday, instead of breaking careless developers' apps on a Saturday. On Jun 12, 12:08 pm, "J. Adam Moore" <[email protected]> wrote: > So do I just allocate as many bits as I can in my database to the id > field and hope that it doesn't ever run out? I'm confused why you just > announced that. Okay, so an overflow is happening. Is that your fault? > Is this fixable on your end, my end. Is this just for people who are > using 32-bit signed ints to store ids? Decide to do what? Roll it over > like an odometer or increase the field size? Forgive me for being an > idiot, but 'decide to do this' is just about vague enough to be > insulting. I was happily under the assumption that this problem was > considered long, long ago when the field size was initially chosen by > who I also assumed to be smart people. > > On Jun 12, 10:23 am, Matt Sanford <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Hi all, > > > The overflow of the 32-bit signed integer value for status ids > > (a.k.a "The Twitpocalypse" [1]) is fast approaching. The current > > estimate is around tomorrow at around 11am GMT, or 3:00am Pacific time > > in the case of Twitter. There is some discussion internally about > > accelerating things so we'll be in the office and able to cope. Nobody > > is their freshest at 3:00am, not to mention it would be nice to not > > have apps broken throughout the weekend if one-person developer teams > > don't notice. No decision has been made yet but I wanted to get > > something out to you all so you know what's going on in the event we > > decide to do this. > > > Thanks; > > – Matt Sanford / @mzsanford > > Twitter Dev > > > [1] -http://www.twitpocalypse.com/
