Philipp Stephani wrote:
> It would be great to defer
> the discussion about naming, string vs. nil etc. until later so that this
> project can make progress; there's still enough time to discuss until the
> changes get releases.

Better yet, let's just get that stuff done now. I'm attaching a followup that I 
hope works well enough. The first patch is a copy of yours, except with the 
commit message reformatted a bit for Emacs standards. The second patch is the 
followup. The third patch is the two patches combined; this should be easier to 
review than looking at the individual patches.

The basic ideas behind the second patch:

* Document the changes in etc/NEWS and in the relevant part of the manual.

* Use "deterministic-build", not "deterministic-dump", for the name. I didn't 
understand the need for two variables here; we can add another one if needed.

* Represent unknown values with nil, not with magic strings like "elided" or 
"unknown".

* Make emacs-build-time deterministic, too.

* Adjust the output of emacs-version and similar functions to omit the build date.

* Remove what appears to be an unnecessary initialization in 'main'.