[rb-general] reproducible anything

[David A. Wheeler]

On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 12:04:15 +0000, "Bernhard M. Wiedemann" <bernhardout at lsmod.de> wrote:
> We recently discussed about how to have different flavours of tar
> produce the same output (somewhat hard)

I think this is a fine long-term goal, and feel free to investigate, but I'm worried about the perfect becoming the enemy of the good.

Right now I think it's more important to have some common distro (Debian?) with a reproducible *core* ("key required packages that people actually use really do reproduce").  It's okay if you have to use the same tool & version to build it; that's already true for other tools like compilers.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, there are a lot of important changes that aren't fully deployed yet in a real distro. I think effort should focus on getting something completely out in people's hands by default, or there won't be enough momentum to do the other things.

--- David A. Wheeler