Bug#834190: perl: please make the output of ExtUtils::Command::MM reproducible

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2017 at 03:48:56PM +1300, Chris Lamb wrote:
> Hi Dominic,
> 
> > Could you clarify how this showed up as an issue as part of the
> > reproducible builds work?
> 
> Not sure how I can add beyond the original bug report alas :) However,
> what I was seeing was that ExtUtils::Command::MM was generating
> "perllocal.pod" files that contained the current time of day,
> hence the patch.

I suppose my question was whether you saw this in the context of
a package build (which would be odd, but I'm sure there are cases
where it happens) or at some other time (in which case, is there
still a justification for working towards reproducibility)? I appreciate
this was a long time ago so you may not have the information, and I
should have asked this at the time.

perllocal.pod generation is already disabled for vendor installs so either
there is a bug in that or you saw the generation happening elsewhere.

https://sources.debian.net/src/perl/5.24.1-1/debian/patches/debian/no_packlist_perllocal.diff/

> > A reproducible build should just disable perllocal generation
> >
> >   — https://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/pull/279
> 
> I'm afraid I just don't know -- am not deep enough into Perl packaging
> to know the impact of this.
> 
> Let me comment on there actually...

Thanks!
Dominic.