[Reproducible-builds] Bug#796130: man2html: please use $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH to produce reproducible output

[Maria Valentina Marin]

Source: man2html
Version: 1.6g-7
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
User: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org
Usertags: timestamps
X-Debbugs-Cc: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org

Hi!

While working on the "reproducible builds" effort [1], we have noticed
that man2html does not allow to build documentation reproducibly.

The Debian reproducible builds team recently proposed a new
environment variable $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH to be used by packages to
produce reproducible timestamps [2].

I propose the attached patch which makes man2html use the latest date in
debian/changelog as the timestamp for its html output if
$SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is exported. Otherwise man2html will continue with
its default behaviour of using the date of today to produce its timestamps.

A version of man2html with this patch is currently being used in the
reproducible builds git repository and it has been successful at making
a package become reproducible.

The version of man2html in my patch is the version that we have in the
reproducible builds git repository.

Kind Regards,
akira


[1] https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/TimestampsProposal
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