Re: [PATCH PING] Honor 'SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH' when generating autoloads.

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: p.stephani2@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 19:01:37 -0800
> 
> I just now installed into emacs-25 the attached, which should future-proof the 
> Dec. 25 change whenever it happens to be merged into master.

Thanks.  I still wonder whether this is worth the hassle that will
come our way.

> > the reproducible build is not (yet) the standard
> > build, it's more like an anomaly at this time, so I thought we should
> > have the string explain itself.  And nil cannot explain anything.
> 
> That is what documentation is for, no? :-)

Documentation is for details and for when the code and the built-in
doc strings fail to explain themselves.  It sounds strange to send
users to documentation for such a simple issue.

> Having now had some experience with using the deterministic-build API in code, I 
> far prefer using (if FOO ...) to something like (if (string-equal FOO "(elided 
> due to deterministic builds)") ...).

No, the idea is that with the string you don't need any if's at all.
The string speaks for itself when you display it.

> It is much simpler to use nil to represent missing information

It sounds strange that Emacs should "miss the information" about the
system it was built on; that could well sound like a bug to some.
Keeping it a string that explains itself was supposed to remove that
difficulty.