[Reproducible-builds] Bug#774422: perl: please make perl builds reproducible

[Niko Tyni]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2015 at 09:05:28PM +0100, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> Niko Tyni:
> > > Subject: [PATCH] Fix mtimes before building binary packages

> > Is this because of the date header in manpages? Setting the POD_MAN_DATE
> > environment variable could/should suffice for that, I think. See
> > debian/patches/fixes/pod_man_reproducible_date.diff
> 
> This is needed to have reproducible mtimes in data.tar and control.tar.
> This is done right before calling dpkg-source.

Ah, right. Sorry about that.

A few more notes:

- the build system also embeds information about the build host, at
  least the kernel version and hostname. Those need to be stripped too.
  From 'perl -V':

    osname=linux, osvers=3.16.0-4-amd64, archname=x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
    uname='linux estella 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 smp debian 3.16.7-ckt2-1 (2014-12-08) x86_64 gnulinux '

  I assume varying uname et al. isn't actively tested yet?

- I would expect some of the generated manual pages to embed the build
  date, at least for patched modules like Net::SMTP. Are builds from
  different days compared currently and/or are you setting POD_MAN_DATE
  externally? (see #759405)

- I don't think 0003-Allow-cf_time-to-be-set-externally is needed,
  as config.over can override cf_time without it AFAICS.

Sorry I'm a bit slow with this... :)
-- 
Niko