Debian and SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH=0

[Olivier Dion]

On Sat, 14 Feb 2026, Ludovic Courtès <ludo at gnu.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Simon Josefsson via rb-general <rb-general at lists.reproducible-builds.org> skribis:
>
>> HP-UX 'make' treats mtime 0 as a missing file, and POSIX encourage it:
>>
>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2024-12/msg00209.html
>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2024-12/msg00227.html
>>
>> If you want to depend on GNU make behaviour, all is good.
>
> The Nix build daemon (and thus the Guix daemon) “forever” used mtime = 1
> to work around software that gives mtime == 0 special treatment:
>
>   https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/14bc3ce3d6d5745717fa19b8b43b5fdd117ff757
>
> It’s probably safer to avoid mtime == 0!

I knew it!  I knew that some software would somehow think 0 is special
and break!  Thanks for the info!

Regards,
Olivier
-- 
Olivier Dion