Kei Kebreau <kei@openmailbox.org> writes:

> This was supposed to be a simple version bump for Maxima, but it has
> come to my attention that Maxima hasn't built reproducibily for quite a
> while now (since version 5.36.1 according to my tests, possibly
> further). Is there any particular reason why? I can't seem to pinpoint
> the cause.

The patch looks good. Are you sure it was reproducible before?

I've found 'diffoscope' to be useful when troubleshooting
reproducibility problems. E.g. by running it on two cancelled builds, or
by installing to different output paths with a superficial change to the
expression. It will show sections that differs which may aid locating
the offending code.

For C family programs, a "hail mary" grep for __DATE__ or __TIME__ can
be enough. Tobias suggested making those return a fixed value, which I
think could be worthwhile, at least for the build environment.