binutils-dev: included log files introduce reproducibility issues

[Paul Wise]

On Mon, 24 Feb 2020 14:09:23 -0800 Vagrant Cascadian wrote:

> Exploring avenues to put files like this into some separate artifact for
> things that are not reproducible might be one avenue

There is already the BYHAND (and automatic BYHAND) mechanisms for files
that get installed outside of pool/ in the Debian apt repository. Each
one needs support from dak too though.

https://salsa.debian.org/ftp-team/dak/-/tree/master/scripts/debian/
https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=byhand+path%3Adebian&literal=0

The other option would be to put the files in a test results .deb file,
but that would still mean repro-builds folks would compare them, unless
there were a naming convention that could be used to ignore them.

It strikes me that these files are most similar to .buildinfo or the
build logs in that they are data *about* the builds. I've wanted
maintainers to be able to also upload build logs with their binary
builds and started a WIP patch for that.

https://salsa.debian.org/pabs/dak/-/commits/maintainer-build-logs

It looks like dpkg-genchanges can already add more files through the
debian/files input file. I managed to get my build log included in my
.changes file using this mechanism. I then attempted to upload it to
the Debian archive, queued gladly accepted the upload but dak rejected
it saying that it looks like a BYHAND package:

   whowatch_1.8.6-2_amd64.changes: whowatch_1.8.6-1_amd64.build.log looks like a byhand package, but is in section build

I suggest that the dpkg-dev maintainer and the ftp-masters should be
talked to about this topic. Probably the right mechanism is to have a
convention in debian/files similar to how dbgsyms are represented and
similar to byhand but the files go into the pool like .deb files do.

   whowatch_1.8.6-1_amd64.build build optional automatic=yes
   whowatch-dbgsym_1.8.6-2_amd64.deb debug optional automatic=yes

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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