[Reproducible-builds] Bug#792687: gettext: please support timestamps from environment

[Daniel Shahaf]

Hi,

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 01:57:48PM +0100, Bruno Haible wrote:
> In my opinion (as former Gettext maintainer) the fix ought to go into
> msgfmt, not xgettext.
> 
> The gettext.diff.txt patch from
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=792687
> is therefore the wrong approach, IMO.

Putting the fix into msgfmt is an option when the .mo file needs to be
reproducible, but I'm facing an issue where I'd like the .pot file
generated by xgettext to be reproducible as well.

I'm looking at a build process that generates a tar.gz from an svn tag.
The build process generates a .pot file from the tag and adds it to the
tar.gz.  The .pot file embeds the current time, which makes the tar.gz
unreproducible.  Changing msgfmt does not help in this situation, since
the .po→.mo compilation happens after the tar.gz is created.

One way to make the tar.gz reproducible would be for the build process
to tell xgettext what value to set the POT-Creation-Date to.  Would that
be a good idea?  If not, what would you suggest?

Cheers,

Daniel

P.S. I use xgettext from gettext-0.19.8.1-2 on stretch (but it's the
same version as in sid).