Bug#961064: reprotest: use of faketime causes newly created file to have very old modified time

[James Valleroy]

Package: reprotest
Version: 0.7.14
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I am creating a package php-arthurhoaro-web-thumbnailer, and reprotest
is sometimes failing in the Salsa CI pipeline.

https://salsa.debian.org/php-team/pear/php-arthurhoaro-web-thumbnailer/-/jobs/751213

The failing test case creates a file representing a file in a
cache. It expects the modified time of the file to be within 1 hour of
current time.

I added some prints (cleaned up and commented version below) to help debug:

time(): 1631998736
touch($cacheFile);
clearstatcache();  // has no effect
filemtime($cacheFile): 1589907896
touch("debug-reprotest");  // a new file, see that it behaves the same way
filemtime("debug-reprotest"): 1589907896

The difference between time() and filemtime($cacheFile) is 487+ days,
the same value is shown passed to faketime in the log.

Please consider whether to change the default use of faketime.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.6.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages reprotest depends on:
ii  apt-utils              2.1.2
ii  diffoscope             144
ii  libdpkg-perl           1.19.7
ii  procps                 2:3.3.16-5
ii  python3                3.8.2-3
ii  python3-debian         0.1.37
ii  python3-distro         1.5.0-1
ii  python3-pkg-resources  46.1.3-1
ii  python3-rstr           2.2.6-2

Versions of packages reprotest recommends:
ii  disorderfs   0.5.9-2
ii  faketime     0.9.7-3
ii  locales-all  2.30-8
ii  sudo         1.9.0-1

Versions of packages reprotest suggests:
ii  autodep8     0.22
ii  qemu-system  1:5.0-5
ii  qemu-utils   1:5.0-5
ii  schroot      1.6.10-9

-- no debconf information