[Distutils] reproducible builds

[Matthias Klose]

On 17.03.2017 18:19, Robin Becker wrote:
> An issue has been raised for reportlab to support a specific environment
> variable namely SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. The intent is that we should get our time
> from this variable rather than time.localtime(time.time()) so that produced
> documents are more invariant.
> 
> First off is this a reasonable request? The variable is defined by debian here
> https://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/
> 
> What happens if other distros decide not to use this environment variable? Do I
> really want distro specific code in the package?
> 
> In addition we already have our own mechanism for making the produced documents
> invariant although it might require an extension to support externally specified
> date & time as in the debian variable.
> 
> In short where does the distro responsibility and package maintainers boundary
> need to be?

the reproducible-builds thing is not just a Debian thing, it's supported by
other distros and upstream projects.

Matthias