[Reproducible-builds] Should reprotest set $HOME to an existent or nonexistent directory?

[Holger Levsen]

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 03:48:09PM -0400, Ceridwen wrote:
> It came up in discussion of this bug that setting $HOME to a
> nonexistent directory causes a build to generate errors:
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=829113
 
I rather think that bug is due to gui applications starting, which
shouldnt happen in a build…

And in the bug mentioned by Chris, #830739, I don't even see $HOME
mentioned…

> At the moment, reprotest sets $HOME to '/nonexistent/first-build'
> and '/nonexistent/second-build', following the prebuilder script in
> this.  (Neither prebuilder nor reprotest guarantee that those
> directories don't exist.)  As Lunar said, one possible alternate fix
> for that specific bug is to create two different temporary directories
> and set $HOME to those directories instead.  Is this a good idea?

I don't think so. The official Debian buildds also use non-existing
$HOME directories when building stuff, so packages *must* cope with
that.

I think the current implementation is a good one.


-- 
cheers,
	Holger
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