Enabling -ffile-prefix-map by default

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On 2020-06-03, Benjamin Barenblat wrote:
> About two years ago, Guillem Jover added support for -ffile-prefix-map
> to dpkg [1] (thanks!).

Wow, hard to believe that was nearly two years ago!

Thanks for bringing this up!


> Related discussion [2] concluded that the option
> should be disabled by default and enabled after Reproducible Builds had
> trialed it for a while. Having enabled it in some of my recent
> packaging, I’m curious whether it may be time to switch this flag to be
> enabled by default. What do you think?

It helps maybe hundreds of packages, and we've identified a small (16 at
the moment) number packages for which it causes issues:

  https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/issues/unstable/ftbfs_due_to_f-file-prefix-map_issue.html

But most of those packages still FTBFS on bullseye and buster where we
don't set the flag (or vary the build path)...

There may also be others that fail but haven't been identified.

I recall this thread where it broke test suites of some packages:

  https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/reproducible-builds/Week-of-Mon-20190204/011101.html


I believe maintainers can override this flag in their packages if
needed? If so, I'd be inclined to explore setting it by default!


live well,
  vagrant
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