Bug#847805: reprotest: document/support simple reproducibility test with sbuild

[Johannes Schauer]

Hi Sean,

Quoting Sean Whitton (2016-12-12 00:44:05)
> On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 03:12:57PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> > I have sbuild properly set up on my machine, and I want to use it to
> > test package reproducibility.  Something like this, where PWD is an
> > unpacked source package:
> > 
> > 1) sbuild
> > 2) record .deb checksums from .changes file
> > 3) sbuild
> > 4) compare .deb checksums in new .changes file
> > 5) run diffoscope if the checksums differ
> 
> Thanks to #debian-reproducible, this is mostly what I wanted:
> 
>     reprotest auto . -- schroot unstable-amd64-sbuild
> 
> This doesn't actually invoke sbuild, but it does perform the builds
> inside the schroot I already have set up, and compare the results.
> 
> This is useful, but it would also be good if reprotest could invoke
> sbuild(1) itself.  That is because sbuild has lots of useful options.
> 
> For example, suppose that foo depends on dh_bar, and I am hacking on
> dh_bar in the hope of making foo reproducible.  Then I want to build foo
> against my local version of dh_bar.  With sbuild, I can do this using
> --extra-package and --add-depends.  reprotest with a pure schroot backend
> can't do that kind of thing, so far as I can tell.

from what I understood, reprotest is supposed to be distribution agnostic. This
is also why they forked autopkgtest which supposedly makes many Debian-specific
assumptions.

I second your desire to have a tool that works well for development in Debian
(and its derivatives) - for example by using sbuild or pbuilder instead. It is
up to the reprotest maintainers whether such feature should be added to
reprotest or whether we really need "yet another shell script".

In the latter case, I'm open to patches against sbuild which could easily carry
such an sbuild wrapper to automatically test reproducibility with sbuild on
Debian (and derivatives).

In either case, with my sbuild maintainer hat on, please file wishlist bugs
against sbuild if its interface is not sufficient to run reproducibility tests
with it.

Thanks!

cheers, josch
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 801 bytes
Desc: signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/reproducible-builds/attachments/20161212/e9b25422/attachment.sig>