Bug#991928: grub2: reproducible builds: embeds different strings depending on (obscure) locales

[James Addison]

Hi Vagrant,

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 at 10:06, James Addison <jay at jp-hosting.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 03:40 Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant at reproducible-builds.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 2024-10-19, James Addison wrote:
>> > [ ... snip ... ]
>> > I don't find any clearly locale-related differences when comparing the
>> > current output of the comparative builds[1] of grub2 in the
>> > Reproducible Builds test infrastructure for Debian.
>>
>> The locales tested in the test infrastructure do not trigger the issue.
>
>
> Ok, that likely explains it.  I'll run the reprotest variations you suggested (ideally both without, and then with, the patch applied) soon to confirm that.

I've spent some time attempting rebuilds, but am having difficulty
replicating this bug.  I do find some nondeterministic results, but
they don't appear to be related to locales (one is a chmod/file
permission error -- one is a timestamp, and there may be another in
there that I'm yet to determine).

I have been using "--vary=-all,+locales,locales.locale=..." with the
suggested locale codes, and I've installed the Debian "locales" and
"locales-all" packages in addition to the base build-deps for grub2
itself.

Are there any additional steps required for the build nondeterminism
to appear?  As a follow-up task I may attempt rebuilds from older
snapshots around the time of the bugreport -- but perhaps there's
something I'm missing.

Thanks again,
James