[fpc-pascal] Very vague gettickcount64 description?

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 7 Sep 2019, Zoe Peterson wrote:

>> From: Martin Frb <lazarus at mfriebe.de>
>> But that does not mean, it needs to be changed on existing targets.
>> And if it is not going to be changed, then it can be documented.
>
> I agree with everything Martin has said, though IMO GetTickCount must 
> return values in ms on every single platform and any that can't should 
> have it removed. It's not a precision timer and it should not be an 
> intrinsic for whatever random RDTSC-like instruction the current 
> platform has. It's used for checking (rough) elapsed times. I honestly 
> can't think of a single use for the current function as defined, especially 
> in a cross-platform app. Precision and accuracy can vary, but 
> unspecified units with no way to query them is ridiculous.

For relative measurements, units are not needed. A ratio has no units, the
only thing that is required is that the units for both measurements are the
same (which should be the case on a single platform).

But I have re-checked the Microsoft documentation, the implementation, and
have added millisecond units to documentation of gettickcount(64).

Note that the FPC implementation gives an increasing time, not the number of
milliseconds elapsed since system boot. Which is what, strictly speaking,
it should return to comply to the Microsoft implementation.

Michael.