[rb-general] GNU coding standards discussion

[Holger Levsen]

On Fri, Dec 02, 2016 at 03:43:36PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > It seems that rather than simply writing a general encouragement to
> > accept patches, the gnu-proc-disc list (and particularly rms) think it
> > desirable to try to give a definition of reproducibility.
> Ximin raised valid concerns about the definition.  Fundamentally, I
> think it’s hard to come up with a definition that covers every important
> aspect while not being too specific to particular techniques and tools.

I've seen concerns about inputs and outputs, but I'm not sure I've seen
the concept of "reproducible" questioned…

> Yet there’s consensus among distros about what “reproducible” means, and
> each distro knows how to check for reproducibility with its own tools,
> which is the important part to me.

I think we actually agree on something, that is "compilation of the same
source always has bit by bit identical results" so that we can check for
reproducibility by checking for identical hashes and/or plain /usr/bin/diff
should return "no bit difference".

So I think we also agree that Signals "reproducible builds", which
requires a specific tool to determine whether two builds are identical,
are actual not Reproducible Builds according to our shared definition.

As a single sentence, "Reproducible builds have bit by bit identical build
results.", maybe?

> I think what matters is that the recommendation that RMS suggested at
> the very beginning ends up in the Standards.

can you share that?


-- 
cheers,
	Holger
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