[parted-devel] reproducible output

[John Gilmore]

Brian, would you object to accepting a patch that added a command-line
option to parted, that would make its small number of "random" values
predictable?  Perhaps the option would set a pseudo-random seed, or
perhaps it would just set those random values to zeroes.

That would allow things like scripts that build OS distributions to use
Parted to format and partition a blank bootable disk image, and then
mount it and start to fill it in, while making it possible to build the
same exact bit-for-bit identical distribution from its source code on
anyone's machine.

Thanks for considering the idea.

	John

PS:  I've been on the parted list for years, and also been working on
bit-for-bit reproducibility of software releases for years.