[Reproducible-builds] SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH specification document

[Ximin Luo]

On 27/08/15 15:32, Chris Lamb wrote:
> Chris Lamb wrote:
> 
>> I plan to dump the rest of what's in my head today (depending on the
>> level of sun)
> 
> Sincere apologies that this took longer than promised, but I think I've
> reached a good point:
> 
>   https://reproducible.debian.net/specs/source-date-epoch-spec/
> 
> I'll wait a few days, proof-read a more few times and then declare it
> published.
> 
> In the meantime, suggestions and contributions are highly welcome. Feel
> free to commit "rough" changes directly to the repo; I am very happy to
> "fold in" improvements in this way. (If you are not already a member of
> our Alioth group, this would be the excuse you were waiting for..)
> 

Hi, very nice work.

I would add in a paragraph about why it's not feasible to keep embedded timestamps and simply have a "diff" program ignore these. I've encountered this proposal before by lazy upstreams that don't want to acknowledge that the problem (and hence solution) lies on *their* side.

Something like (from the current wiki page):

.. it is not feasible to develop a diff algorithm to ignore "build dates" in arbitrary data formats, and fundamentally impossible in the case of Turing-complete data formats such as executables, since the real behaviour of the result could easily change based on a piece of data embedded in the file, even if the data is itself static or immutable.

> exposed through the system's usual environment mechanism

unsure what "environment mechanism" means - hardware clock? syscall?

In the meantime I'll push some other minor edits too.

X

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