Continuous integration: SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and testing

[Arnout Engelen]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2025, at 02:28, James Addison via rb-general wrote:
> 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)?

I think generally tests should succeed whether or not SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH was set beforehand.

If a program is intended to have different behavior based on whether or not SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is set, the test should either allow both behaviors, or make sure SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is set or not during the test setup.

I can definitely see projects choosing to set SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH when running their tests (nice and predictable, and many build systems don't neatly distinguish between the 'build' and 'test' parts of the build). On the other hand, it can also be valuable to run tests without SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH being set (as that is potentially more consistent with how 'real' users will be running the software). The latter might not be so true for 'development' tools like sphinx, though.


Kind regards,

-- 
Arnout Engelen
Engelen Open Source
https://engelen.eu
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