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

[Jérémy Bobbio]

Jeroen Dekkers:
> > PPS: If we start bikeshedding on every patch, there's not even the
> > slightest chance we will get to the point where build reproducibility is
> > actually a Debian feature. We need to trust maintainers to do the right
> > things.
> 
> I definitely don't want to bikeshed about every patch, but I think
> it's a good idea to discuss what is the best way to fix this class of
> bugs, because we are going to have to fix this in a lot more places. I
> remember from the DC13 bof that it was proposed to have
> dpkg-buildpackage export the locale, so my thought was, instead of
> having to do this in the debian/rules of every package that needs it,
> why not have dpkg-buildpackage export the changelog timestamp?

It seems it makes maintainers unhappy when calling `debian/rules build`
and `dpkg-buildpackage` produce different results. (Note that I'm
mentioning the “build” target here.)

That's why I tend to think relying on something exported by
`dpkg-buildpackage` is tricky.

One other concern for now is that Guillem has not commented on
#759999. So it's unclear to me if DEB_BUILD_TIMESTAMP is going to stay
in the future.

> And even if we put it in debian/rules, I think it's a good idea to
> standardize on the environment name we use for this.

Is there really something generic enough to be applied to all packages?
For lsof (see #762433), the code already supported LSOF_CCDATE (which
contained the timestamp of the build) being an empty string. So it felt
proper to just modify the configure script to be able to write an empty
string… For other packages, maybe upstream would rather use a date
present in their changelog, or their Git repository as said earlier.

For now, I don't know. Let's just fix more packages so we can figure
this out.

-- 
Lunar                                .''`. 
lunar at debian.org                    : :Ⓐ  :  # apt-get install anarchism
                                    `. `'` 
                                      `-   
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