[Reproducible-builds] Bug#759999: dpkg-dev: please make mtimes of packaged files deterministic

[Guillem Jover]

Hi!

On Fri, 2016-01-15 at 22:28:12 +0100, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> reassign 759886 dpkg-dev
> retitle 759886 dpkg-dev: please make mtimes of packaged files deterministic
> thanks

Thanks for the patches!

> The second patch will use the --mtime and --clamp-mtime option of tar to
> clamp the mtime of files recorded in control.tar and data.tar to the
> build timestamp: files created at a later time will see their mtime
> set to the build timestamp (that's #759886). As --clamp-mtime is only
> available since tar/1.28-1 and has not yet been merged upstream,
> dpkg-deb will first look for its availability by looking for the option
> in the output of “tar --help”. If it's not available, it will fallback
> to the previous behavior.

The --clamp-mtime options looks primising, but I'm not happy about its
current situation. Please get this upstreamed first. I don't mind making
dpkg depend on an extremely recent GNU tar, but I really don't want to
use a Debian specific option like this, as it could change semantics,
etc. And I don't like parsing --help output at all. I still have to fix
the situation with dpkg-source using the Debian specifi gzip --rsyncable
option, for example. :(

Thanks,
Guillem