Bug#900918: debian-installer: Please make the generated images reproducible

[Cyril Brulebois]

Hi Chris,

Chris Lamb <lamby at debian.org> (2019-01-19):
> >  * 0c19a29645a6a3136f3a51da5d5cf1cfcec5fdfb mentions file system
> >    ordering only, but that's just the sort part
> 
> I've split this commit and it is much clearer now.

Perfect, thanks.

> >  * 71391967763708055a65ed68999db8f4ea6fc6e6 sets “deb00001” as the
> >    FAT volume ID; have you checked with people like debian-cd@
> >    whether another constant might make more sense?
> 
> Clarified where this comes from in the commmit and in the code
> itself.

Thanks.

> >  * ea1a896181daa3b82c5a62ae31839b457a0dbe0b modifies BUILD_DATE,
> >    adding a few characters (“:SS”); that ends up in various help
> >    screens
> 
> In my tests, this did not break any visual text wrapping, etc.

Perfect.

> >  * f181b4fe90b9030f515c7e6129239b96131b3926 oh more en_GB, yay.
> 
> Fixed (use 'results' instead).

(I was genuinely happy to learn about the en_GB version; always
struggling to remember how to spell it in French vs. (American) English,
was happy to discover the British English version. :))

> §
> 
> Thank you again for your review. Let me know if you would require any
> further modifications before merging. :-)

That's looking good but I'm seeing new warnings because of gzip's being
unhappy about the GZIP environment variable. This seems to have been
deprecated in gzip 1.8:

    gzip: warning: GZIP environment variable is deprecated; use an alias or script

I'm attaching the patch I've deployed locally, and it seems to me that
[1] might want an update.

 1. https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/TimestampsInGzipHeaders

An other solution would be to use tar | gzip instead of passing -I to
tar, but I thought I'd learn about that option in the process. :)

Back to d-i results: I'm seeing small differences in the generated
-images tarball, that I'll try to investigate. I'll probably push the
series anyway, as these patches are helping anyway. :)


Cheers,
-- 
Cyril Brulebois (kibi at debian.org)            <https://debamax.com/>
D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant
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