#22 Please make the build reproducible

[Markus Koschany]

Hi,

Debian is currently working on a goal called "reproducible builds". It shall empower users to verify that no flaws have been introduced during the build process so that they can easily verify that a binary package corresponds to a given source.

Osmo uses DATE and TIME macros which capture the current time and thus make the build unreproducible. Attached is a patch that removes those macros. An alternative solution would be to use a fixed date and time and instead of writing "compiled on" you could display "released on". All in all being reproducible has more advantages for Osmo's users than knowing when a certain version was compiled.

More information about reproducible builds are available here:

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

Thanks for your consideration

[Tomek]

I don't like the proposed patch. Instead, please add an option to configure script (called --enable-debian-release or something similar) to enable/disable conditionally the code with DATE and TIME macros.

[Markus Koschany]

Ok, here is another one.

[Tomek]

Thanks! Patch committed in r1027.