Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> skribis:

> On 2021-07-19 05:08, Guillaume Le Vaillant wrote:
>> So Debian indeed has a patch adding the possibility to set the timestamp
>> based on SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH (see '2010_add_build_timestamp_setting.patch'
>> in [1] for example).
>
> Looks like they rolled out this patch into production in 2015.
>
> Is there a reason why Guix can't just steal the Debian patches
> related to reproducibility? (Like underlying differences it the overall
> approach which lead to incompatibilities?)

I don't think so, the developer who made the patch for Guix probably
just didn't know about Debian's patch.


> It would probably be best if distros did this the same way, so
> there are no surprises.
>
> GNU/Linux could set a precedent for other platforms, even.
> If I'm building something on, say, Cygwin, OpenBSD or MacOS, if the
> reproducbility stuff works the same way like on GNU/Linuxes, that's
> great.
>
> Here is a powerful argument why Just One Way of doing it is better:
>
> Distros should not be carrying patches for this in the first place;
> the programs themselves should be upstreaming the changes for
> reproducibility.
>
> If there is an agreed-upon /de facto/ (or /de jure/) standard way
> of doing it, it is easier to persuade the individual program developers to
> accept the changes. They have a single target to hit which covers
> all platforms.
>
> In contrast, if reproducibility is an /ad hoc/ OS-and-distro-specific
> matter, they are going to be understandably less motivated to upstream
> the changes.
>
> Nobody wants a situation in their source tree like:
>
>   patches/for-debian
>          /for-guix
>          /for-solaris
>          ...
>
> Just one implementation, committed into trunk, with with no #ifdefs.

In this case upstream explicitly refused merging the patches for
reproducibility (https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=698208).