Does diffoscope compares disk partitions

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On 2023-03-01, John Gilmore wrote:
>>> So, overall, I actually don't think that diffoscope has the requested
>>> support, and it's not "just" a bug of failed identification.
>
> I have been surprised at how much effort has gone into "diffoscope" as a
> total fraction of the Reproducible Builds effort.  Perhaps it is a case
> akin to the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight where he
> can see, rather than in the dark where he dropped them.

I daresay it is more akin to someone looking for lost keys by inventing
a flashlight to look near where they dropped them, and they happen to
have dropped the keys into a bin with miscelaneous arbitrary pieces and
bits of things, many off which are shaped and/or sized roughly like your
keys... and wow before nobody thought to make a flashlight shine at so
many different wavelengths, or detect the density of the materials, or
produce a harmonic resonance with certain materials, or a high intensity
laser to burn off all the organic detritus that has accumulated,
and... only to find out that people have been loosing their keys in this
bin for decades, and we found someone else's keys too! Oh, look, with
this small tweak, we could also detect antique coins...


> (It's easier to hack diffoscope than to hack thousands of
> irreproducible packages.)

Fixing reproducibility issues blindfolded does not seem like an
efficient way to fix issues either. We have already fixed tens of
thousands of issues, and have thousands more that we are working on.
Diffoscope is a highly useful tool towards that end.


live well,
  vagrant
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