Bug#775010: libmaven-archiver-java: please allow pom.properties' date to be deterministic

[solo-debianbugs at goeswhere.com]

Package: libmaven-archiver-java
Version: 2.5-1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
User: reproducible-builds at lists.alioth.debian.org
Usertags: toolchain

Hi!

While working on the “reproducible builds” effort [1], we have noticed
that many Java packages would not build reproducibly because Maven emits
a build date in the "pom.properties" file generated by maven-archiver
(as used by maven-jar-plugin) [2].

Ideally, this date would be removed.
I believe that it's there by accident:
 * it's in a comment so it's hard (but not impossible) for people to access
 * it's written by java.lang.Properties, not intentionally by Maven code
 * it's not updated by any of the code in maven-archiver to update the file

However, in order to maintain nearly total backwards compatability, the
attached patch causes the original behaviour to be maintained unless a
BUILD_DATE environment variable is set.  The plan is for this to
(eventually) be set by something like javahelper.  Patch should apply to
2.5, 2.6 and trunk at time of writing (2.7-SNAPSHOT).

Your thoughts would be appreciated.  There are some alternative
solutions being gathered on the wiki [3].

Cheers.

 [1]: https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
 [2]: https://reproducible.debian.net/issues/timestamps_in_maven_pom_files_issue.html
 [3]: https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/TimestampsInMavenPomProperties

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