Build with DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="nocheck" when testing for reproducibility?

[Santiago Vila]

El 22/3/25 a las 20:34, Otto Kekäläinen escribió:
> Hi!
> 
> I noticed https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/rb-pkg/unstable/amd64/mariadb.html
> is failing on a single test failing in the test suite that runs after
> the actual build. While the test should of course be made more robust,
> I am not sure running those tests are relevant for testing
> reproducibility as the tests don't affect the artifacts, so it would
> actually make sense to skip those tests when testing for
> reproducibility.
> 
> Is there some general technique to run specific packages with
> DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="nocheck" in reproducible builds?

There are two schools of thought about that.

The official definition in Policy says this:

"repeatedly building the source package [...] will produce bit-for-bit identical binary packages"

It does not say "building the package with nocheck".

It follows from the official definition that "reproducible" implies "buildable", i.e. you can't have
a reproducible package if it fails to build in the normal way.

The other school of thought says that a package which fails to build 80% of the time because
of the tests but produces identical *.deb packages the remaining 20% of the time would be reproducible. In my opinion, that's not the kind of reproducibility we should be aiming for.

But I'm just a casual lurker in this list. Maybe the people who actually run the project
follow the first school, but in such case they should probably amend Policy.

Thanks.