Bug#1136424: sphinx-needs: please make the build reproducible

[Chris Lamb]

Source: sphinx-needs
Version: 5.1.0+dfsg-7
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
User: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org
Usertags: nondeterministic
X-Debbugs-Cc: reproducible-bugs at lists.alioth.debian.org

Hi,

Whilst working on the Reproducible Builds effort [0], we noticed that
sphinx-needs could not be built reproducibly.

This is because the documentation (via the sphinx.ext.duration) Sphinx
extension, generates a sphinx-reading-durations.json file. This does
not seem to be used by the docs itself, so can be removed.

Patch attached that simply removes this file. I did try disabling its
generation by passing another -D option in SPHINXOPT but this did not
work; perhaps you will have better luck.

 [0] https://reproducible-builds.org/


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby at debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-
-------------- next part --------------
--- a/debian/rules	2026-05-13 08:59:35.336249056 -0700
--- b/debian/rules	2026-05-13 09:25:12.261713193 -0700
@@ -51,6 +51,8 @@
 	docs/ build/html 
 	# Remove build log
 	rm -f build/html/debug_filters.jsonl
+	# Remove nondeterministic reading durations added by sphinx.ext.duration
+	rm -f build/html/sphinx-reading-durations.json
 	# Remove cache
 	#rm -rf build/.doctrees