[Reproducible-builds] Ideas about TimestampsFromCPPMacros issue.

[Juan Picca]

Hi guys, long time no see

I want to ask about the status of TimestampsFromCPPMacros
issue.

>From the issue page
(https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/TimestampsFromCPPMacros)
i see that the usage of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH was
discouraged in the gcc-patches mailing list thread.

If no advancement was done with this issue, i want to ask advice
about how handle it.

One of the recommendation in the thread on gcc-patches mailing list
from Manuel
(https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2015-06/msg02238.html)
was add a "-freproducible" flag.

Some ideas:

1. Add a "-freproducible" flag. This flag enables the
  processing of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH environment variable
  (Dhole patch) but fail if it is not defined. The fail and the
explicit flag usage
 is to avoid the silent change in behavior.

2. Add a "-freproducible" flag that disable the
  warning "builtin-macro-redefined" only for __DATE__,
  __TIME__ and __TIMESTAMP__ and fail if these macros are
  used but not defined, enforcing the need of define the macro to
obtain a reproducible build.
  The cons of this idea is the need of define
  the macros via command line with "-D__TIME__=..."

Greetings,
JMPC.