[Reproducible-builds] Bug#762397: libgpg-error: please do not capture the current time during the build process

[Jeroen Dekkers]

At Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:15:50 -0400,
Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> 
> On 09/21/2014 04:58 PM, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 10:45:14PM +0200, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> >> As part of the “reproducible builds” effort [1], it was detected that
> >> libgpg-error could not be built reproducibly.
> >>
> >> The build process capture the time of the build. This piece of
> >> information is not really helpful to anyone and prevents the build
> >> process from being deterministic.
> >>
> >> The attached patch will instead use the time of the latest
> >> debian/changelog entry. Once applied, libgpg-error can be built
> >> reproducibly! :)
> > 
> > Wouldn't it be better to patch configure.ac in a way useful to upstream;
> > for example by having it use the time from an exported environment
> > variable? Otherwise the package is going to have to carry around a
> > Debian-specific patch forever.
> 
> I like Dominic's suggestion (we'd need to pass the env var from
> debian/rules), and i'll see what i can suggest upstream.

Jérémy actually already wrote a patch for dpkg-buildpackage to export
DEB_BUILD_TIMESTAMP:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=759999

But if we want to push these things upstream, wouldn't it be better to
remove the DEB_ prefix from the name of the environment variable?


Jeroen Dekkers