You explicitly tell the compiler to compile against 32-bit library, but since you don't have one installed, it doesn't compile. If somebody compiles 32-bit prog

You explicitly tell the compiler to compile against 32-bit library, but since you don't have one installed, it doesn't compile. If somebody compiles 32-bit program which doesn't require additional dynamic libraries and ships that binary, you won't even know until it fails in 2038. And as you yourself noticed, `time_t` on 64-bit machine is also 64-bit, so even if code was written on 32-bit architecture, if you compile it on 64-bit one, it will automatically become 64-bit.