#356 Make building codeblocks reproducible

[Vincent C.]

( Forwarded from https://bugs.debian.org/824182 )

Please consider applying the attached patch to make building codeblocks a fully reproducible process. This is to support Debian's ongoing efforts to make its entire archive build reproducible. Also see https://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/

[Teodor Petrov]

What is BUILD_TIME? Where is it coming from? Have you tried to build the code with this patch successfully? I couldn't.

[Vincent C.]

Yes, we currently apply this patch to the codeblocks package in Debian to make it build reproducibly.

BUILD_TIME gets exported via CPPFLAGS to be consumed by autotools in the Debian package build (see http://sources.debian.net/src/codeblocks/16.01+dfsg-2/debian/rules/#L20 ). I'm not involved in the Debian reproducible builds effort, but my understanding is that they're attempting to standardize a set of environment variables to be used in common build-reproducible scenarios like embedded timestamps. Alternatively, if there's no need for embedded timestamps, could they be removed from the source tarball entirely?

[Teodor Petrov]

The patch could not be accepted, but I guess it will be good if we could make cb reproducible in the future.

[bluehazzard]

This should no longer be a problem because gcc after v7.1 supports overwriting of DATE:

https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/TimestampsFromCPPMacros

related gcc commit:
174f66220d4d39ed503ded1ec3e7ba514cc4283e

in tag "releases/gcc-7.1.0~7401"