[Reproducible-builds] Bug#782877: libgtk-appindicator: please make the build reproducible

[Niko Tyni]

(bug dropped for now)

On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 10:53:45AM +0000, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
> Source: libgtk-appindicator
> Version: 0.15-1
> Severity: wishlist
> Tags: patch
> User: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org
> Usertags: timestamps

> While working on the “reproducible builds” effort [1], we have noticed
> that libgtk-appindicator could not be built reproducibly.

> +BUILD_DATE = $(shell dpkg-parsechangelog -S Date)
> +POD_MAN_DATE = $(shell date -u +"%Y-%m-%d" --date="$(BUILD_DATE)")
> +export POD_MAN_DATE

This is needed because the package patches a Perl module when extracting
the source archive, so the timestamp of the file will vary with the
build time.

Quoting myself in #780259 :

 According to codesearch.debian.net, we have 819 packages in sid
 that patch *.pm or *.pod files (my search was "\+\+\+ .*\.(pm|pod)
 path:debian/patches").  I would expect that most of these generate
 manual pages with Pod::Man.

Does it really make sense to add the above snippet in hundreds of packages
one at a time? It seems to me that centralizing it in debhelper would
be a better approach.
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org