Debian and SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH=0

[John Neffenger]

On 2/15/26 5:17 AM, David A. Wheeler via rb-general wrote:
>    If you want to use a fixed value, "1" is safer.

Or 315532802.

Just to add another restriction ... the Java 'jar' and 'jmod' tools 
would require a minimum SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH value of 315532802, which is 2 
seconds after January 1, 1980, in UTC:

$ date -d 1980-01-01T00:00:02Z +%s
315532802

Any earlier instant results in the following error after converting 
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH to the '--date=TIMESTAMP' option:

date 1980-01-01T00:00:01+00:00 is not within the valid range 
1980-01-01T00:00:02Z to 2099-12-31T23:59:59Z

See my comment in the original pull request for details:

https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/6481#issuecomment-984220137

and this comment for even more details:

https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/6481#issuecomment-983199820

In summary, when creating ZIP files (and therefore JAR and JMOD files), 
OpenJDK steers clear of the "magic" (for ZIPs) instant of 
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z and doesn't allow an earlier instant.

I'm not sure what we'll do at 2100-01-01T00:00:00Z. :-)

John