Bug#1143617: lcov: please make the build reproducible

[Chris Lamb]

Source: lcov
Version: 2.5-2
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
User: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org
Usertags: timestamps
X-Debbugs-Cc: reproducible-bugs at lists.alioth.debian.org

Hi,

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

Looks like upstream changed how the manpages were generated, meaning
that the manpages became unreproducible again:

│ │ │ ├── ./usr/share/man/man1/gendesc.1.gz
│ │ │ │ ├── gendesc.1
│ │ │ │ │ @@ -24,15 +24,15 @@
│ │ │ │ │  . RE
│ │ │ │ │  .\" indent \\n[an-margin]
│ │ │ │ │  .\" old: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]
│ │ │ │ │  .nr rst2man-indent-level -1
│ │ │ │ │  .\" new: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]
│ │ │ │ │  .in \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]u
│ │ │ │ │  ..
│ │ │ │ │ -.TH "GENDESC" "1" "2027-09-06" "2.5.0" "LCOV"
│ │ │ │ │ +.TH "GENDESC" "1" "2026-08-05" "2.5.0" "LCOV"
│ │ │ │ │  .SH NAME

Patch attached.


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


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby at debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-
-------------- next part --------------
--- a/debian/patches/reproducible-build.patch	1969-12-31 16:00:00.000000000 -0800
--- b/debian/patches/reproducible-build.patch	2026-08-04 17:04:04.702569602 -0700
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+Description: Make the build reproducible
+Author: Chris Lamb <lamby at debian.org>
+Last-Update: 2026-08-04
+
+--- lcov-2.5.orig/docs/Makefile
++++ lcov-2.5/docs/Makefile
+@@ -4,7 +4,12 @@
+ # You can set these variables from the command line.
+ RELEASE       ?= 2.5
+ TOOL_NAME     ?= LCOV
+-BUILD_DATE    ?= $(shell date +%Y-%m-%d)
++DATE_FMT      ?= +%Y-%m-%d
++ifdef SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
++BUILD_DATE    ?= $(shell date -u -d "@$(SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH)" "$(DATE_FMT)" 2>/dev/null || date -u -r "$(SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH)" "$(DATE_FMT)" 2>/dev/null || date -u "$(DATE_FMT)")
++else
++BUILD_DATE    ?= $(shell date "$(DATE_FMT)")
++endif
+ SPHINXOPTS    ?= -D release=$(RELEASE) -D version=$(RELEASE) -D today=$(BUILD_DATE)
+ SPHINXBUILD   ?= sphinx-build
+ SOURCEDIR     = .
--- a/debian/patches/series	2026-08-04 16:55:57.896796049 -0700
--- b/debian/patches/series	2026-08-04 17:04:03.850333589 -0700
@@ -3,3 +3,4 @@
 interp-paths.patch
 version.patch
 fix-redirect.patch
+reproducible-build.patch