[Reproducible-builds] Bug#769844: linux: please make linux build reproducibly

[Jérémy Bobbio]

Bastian Blank:
> On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 12:46:45AM +0100, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> > The first patch adds call to `dh_strip_nondeterminism` and
> > `dh_fixmtimes`, both being part of the custom toolchain currently used
> > for reproducible builds. Hence not tagging the bug with “patch” until
> > they are integrated in debhelper.
> 
> Why does this need new tool instead of being integrated into the
> existing ones?

I am not sure which ones you specifically have in mind, but the whole
project is still at the experimental stage. We try to work in
unintrusive ways.

> > The second patch changes the value of KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP to a
> > timestamp parseable by `date`.
> 
> Well, no.  The string is this way for a reason.

Would a patch against `scripts/gen_initramfs_list.sh` to make it parse
Debian's KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP be acceptable then? Any other
suggestions?

> > An unclear aspect is where to add a call to `dh_genbuildinfo` which
> > generates the .buildinfo [2]. It should be called after all binary
> > packages have been created.
> 
> Not possible, dh_* acts on single binary packages.

Mh… I'm not sure we had realized that. It makes a case to move the
generation of the .buildinfo closer to dpkg-genchanges.

> >  * linux-source: mtimes of many files differ. Would it be ok to just
> >    create the tarball with a single timestamp (`tar --mtime=`)?
>
> Looks like a way.

Good. :) I will experiment with this approach and probably add another
patch to this bug report.

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