[Reproducible-builds] Unifont Font Timestamps

[Jérémy Bobbio]

Hi Paul!

Paul Hardy:
> Greetings.  In examining my QA entry for Unifont, I noticed a new "unrep"
> link.  It seems to have been created on 19 April 2015.  This led to the
> following notice:
> 
> https://reproducible.debian.net/rb-pkg/unstable/amd64/unifont.html
> 
> The Debian Unifont package rebuilds its Unifont TrueType fonts using
> fontforge.  So every time Unifont is built from source on Debian, fontforge
> will generate a new set of TrueType fonts with new timestamps.
> 
> I consider this rebuilding of the Unifont TrueType fonts from scratch to be
> a feature, not a bug.

It's absolutely a feature. :)

The issue here is fontforge that currently will always insert the
current time in various places. Please have a look at the research
I have done so far on how to make packages using fontforge reproducible:
https://bugs.debian.org/774148
https://bugs.debian.org/774274
The later could then be used to fix actual font packages, like:
https://bugs.debian.org/774275

Help to move things forward is highly welcome!

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