[Reproducible-builds] SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH specification document

[Chris Lamb]

Mattia wrote:

> > After a hint from doko, I've started work on an official-looking spec
> > for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
>
> Lamby pointed out that this is not something debian-related, so it would
> be great to have it outsite a debian.{org,net} site.
> 
> OTOH also the howto is not strictly debian-related, and both documents
> are related to reproducibly.
> 
> My personal proposal is to merge the two documents and move them to a new
> more meaningful url (under rb.d.n).

I believe this would handicap adoption of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH in the wider
software community. 

One thing we can learn from FreeDesktop.org, XMPP or even
industry-format specifications such as CD-DA is that even though there
is "obviously" a single actor heavily involved in the process, having a
highly-focused descriptive document promotes adoption by abstracting and
temporarily removing the vendor's influence from the equation.

As a secondary, practical point, we ideally want to publish the
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH specification once and never change it, whilst the
HOWTO could always be improved upon based on feedback and new ideas.
This entirely disparate attitude towards changesets suggests that they
should remain separate.


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby at debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-