Proposal for making Multi-Arch:same binNMU-safe

[Jochen Sprickerhof]

Hi Helmut,

* Helmut Grohne <helmut at subdivi.de> [2026-04-19 12:20]:
>Things would become quite a bit easier if sbuild were performing the
>computation of said timestamp as it already has access to the source
>package at the time it creates the binNMU changelog. I now imagine
>expanding the way BIN_NMU_TIMESTAMP is interpreted by sbuild. Presently,
>there is no sensible way to pass a value that starts with "+". I suggest
>that BIN_NMU_TIMESTAMP="+<digits>" should be interpreted by sbuild as
>adding that number of seconds to the last non-binNMU changelog's
>timestamp. Is that a change sbuild maintainers would be comfortable
>with?

The relevant code already checks for a "+":

if ($self->get_conf('BIN_NMU_TIMESTAMP') =~ /^\+?[1-9]\d*$/) {

lib/Sbuild/Build.pm

(not sure why though).

Also I think passing digits with a different meaning to a timestamp is 
error prone. Especially as we pass the same number to --binNMU= already. 
Is there any use case for having BIN_NMU_TIMESTAMP undef using the build 
time? If not I would propose to repurpose that to the NMU based 
timestamp calculation. Otherwise I would prefer a new option.

Cheers Jochen
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