Hi Reiner,
On Mon, 27 Jun 2016, Reiner Herrmann wrote:
You are right, the mtime of the file is used for the manpage timestamp.
But there is still a patch modifying the manpage:
mcedit_full_path.patch. When this patch is upstreamed, the
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH patch is not needed, though it would still help when
the manpages are patched.
Thank you for the confirmation that my guesses are correct!
However, I'm hesitant to apply SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH to anything that looks
like a nail. I believe that patching of upstream sources by Debian is such
an oft occurring situation, that I would rather look for at solution at
the packaging level. After all, builds from *upstream* sources are
*already* reproducible, in this case, it's the Debian build procedure that
is injecting randomness here.
For instance, it seems to me that it is only logical to set the mtime of
patched files to the mtime of the last patch that touched them, and this
will make the source mtime dependent builds fully reproducible.
Have you already thought of that, and if yes, what are the counter
arguments against this approach?
--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
