Bug#993250: mpb-doc: examples include non-reproducible Makefile containing facts only true for build system

Simon McVittie smcv at debian.org
Sun Aug 29 11:59:42 BST 2021


Package: mpb-doc
Version: 1.11.1-3
Severity: normal
Tags: patch
User: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org
Usertags: buildpaths usrmerge
X-Debbugs-Cc: reproducible-bugs at lists.alioth.debian.org

mpb-doc contains example files accompanied by a Makefile. This Makefile
contains facts that were true on the system where the package was built
but not necessarily true on the system where it will be used, notably the
absolute path to the build directory and the absolute paths to grep
and mkdir.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=961747 is an example
of a similar bug report in a different package, illustrating the two
possible solutions:

- either:
  1. force the canonical paths to grep, mkdir etc. to be discovered
  2. canonicalize the Makefile to omit the absolute build paths
- or:
  - don't ship this Makefile at all, because it is probably not directly
    useful to an end user: they would have to regenerate it from
    Makefile.in to build the examples successfully, because Autotools
    build systems are not typically intended to be portable between
    directory locations or between machines

An implementation of the second approach is attached.

Thanks,
    smcv
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