Bug#784318: gnome-desktop3: please make the build reproducible

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello Lunar.

Thanks for your bug report and patch....

On Tue, May 05, 2015 at 11:36:20AM +0200, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> Source: gnome-desktop3
> Version: 3.14.1-1
> Severity: wishlist
> Tags: patch
> User: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org
> Usertags: timestamps
> 
> Hi!
> 
> While working on the “reproducible builds” effort [1], we have noticed
> that gnome-desktop3 could not be built reproducibly.
> 
> The attached patch will allow GNOME_DATE to be set externally and
> use the latest debian/changelog entry as reference date. Once
> applied, gnome-desktop3 can be built reproducibly in our current
> experimental framework.

I'd like to avoid changing the upstream code, or get the upstream part
merged via upstream.

I looked at the (latest git master version of the) configure.ac for
gnome-desktop and it already has a configure switch called
"--disable-date-in-gnome-version" which as I understand it means
the date should not be put in the XML file. I think we should be able
to live well without this date in that file since we usually track
things based of debian package revision instead. (But I'm not sure
about all the reasons why this date is put in the XML at all.)

Do you think you could help me test if using that configure switch
will also result in a reproducible build? If so, I'll add the 
switch to pkg-gnome svn of gnome-desktop so that it's pending
for next upload (which unfortunately rarely happens for gnome-desktop).

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson