[Reproducible-builds] Bug#785742: dh-strip-nondeterminism: Causes package-contains-timestamped-gzip in lintian test suite

[Andrew Ayer]

tags 785742 + pending
thanks

On Tue, 19 May 2015 20:56:17 +0200
Niels Thykier <niels at thykier.net> wrote:

> Debugging the lintian FTBFS on reproducible.d.n[1], I have found that
> if I override on dh_strip-nondeterminism in the test's rules file, the
> unexpected package-contains-timestamped-gzip tag goes away.
> 
> In general, all gzip files in the lintian test suite are generated
> with "gzip -n" exactly to avoid this tag.

Thanks for the report, Niels.  strip-nondeterminism was actually adding
back the timestamp using the time from the first entry in
debian/changelog. I've just fixed it to not add a timestamp if the gzip
file doesn't already have one.

That said, I'm now concerned about how strip-nondeterminism interacts
with the package-contains-timestamped-gzip tag.  At some point after
package-contains-timestamped-gzip was first proposed, we reproducible
builds folks decided that instead of eliminating timestamps, we should
normalize them with the time from the first entry in debian/changelog,
to satisfy developers who like timestamps.  That means that timestamped
gzips aren't bad, as long as the timestamp is reproducible.

Other reproducible folks, is this still our position on timestamps?  If
so, what should become of package-contains-timestamped-gzip?

-- Andrew