Re: [PING^4][PATCH v2] Generate reproducible output independently of the build-path

[Ximin Luo <infinity0 at pwned dot gg>]

Jakub Jelinek:
> On Fri, Aug 04, 2017 at 08:32:33AM -0400, Matthias Klose wrote:
>>>> GCC already supports a similar environment variable SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, which was accepted about 2 years ago in a patch written by one of our GSoC students. We are not planning any more environment variables like this, and are committed to fixing other sources of non-determinism by patching the relevant build scripts.
>>> I would have rejected that as well :-)  One of the few times I would
>>> have disagreed with Bernd.
>>
>> You can argue that gcc has command line options to set these, but most build
>> systems can be influenced by well documented environment variables like CFLAGS,
>> CXXFLAGS, LDFLAGS, so adding one more variable like SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH makes
>> sense, considering that many tools dealing with timestamps don't even have
>> command line options to do these (and there it's not just about compilers).
> 
> Unlike SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, the other env vars are autoconf/cmake etc.
> related, we really shouldn't be adding more of these.
> If some package has messed up build system, you can use
> CXX='g++ -fwhatever'
> or whatever other way to pass flags you want to the compiler or pick the
> compiler you prefer to use.
> 

As I said, this is the only envvar that we're planning to add, we're not
planning to add any more. Please also see my point in my other email, about
how this is really more of a "cancel-out already-existing environment" piece of
data, different from other first-class options to GCC.

It would be really nice not to have to patch 1800 packages to make them
reproducible.

X

>> [..]

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