On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 10:36:08PM +0200, Maurice Janssen wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 1, 2007 at 00:04:06 +0200, Joachim Schipper wrote:
> >This is just an idea, and might well be completely retarded/wrong, but:
> >
> >Unless I am mistaken, the reason that compiling the same binary twice
> >yields different results is that gcc adds some randomness (barring
> >special circumstance like including date, time, host and version in the
> >kernel, and so on).
> >
> >If one were to extend gcc to accept random data from a file as well as
> >the usual sources (/dev/arandom and such, I suppose), would this not
> >make sure that, given the original random data, one always gets the same
> >binaries?
>
> Perhaps, but what's the benefit? After applying a patch, I don't want
> to have the same binaries, but new and different binaries.
I'm not certain that's as much of a problem as you appear to think, but
the idea is, in fact, retarded, as someone pointed out to me in a (very
polite!) off-list message. (gcc doesn't insert randomness; on the other
hand, tools like ar(1) (for static libraries) and tar(1) include
timestamps. Actually checking before posting random crap might be a good
idea. Shame on me! Sorry for the noise, everyone...)
Joachim
--
PotD: x11/wmtz - wm-dockapp; displays the time in different time zones
