Continuous integration: SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and testing

[James Addison]

Hi folks,

A recent change that I made in the Sphinx codebase, related to
copyright notices and SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, has caused unit test failures
during package builds for a couple of Linux distributions.  Although
the precise details aren't germane to my posting this thread, please
let me know if you'd like more information and I'll be glad to
explain.

The test failures raised a question in my mind: are there any
recommendations about whether SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH must-not / can /
should / must be configured during (immediate and/or later) testing of
software that has been built reproducibly?  And if so, for what
reason(s)?

Thanks,
James