Hi, I was trying to import the new version of make into unstable, and I discovered that t/10 tests about the archive related part of makes test suite failed. The reason was a change in the behaviour of ar, which is now configured with --enable-deterministic-archives. When adding files and the archive index use zero for UIDs, GIDs, timestamps, and use consistent file modes for all files. When this option is used, if ar is used with identical options and identical input files, multiple runs will create identical output files regardless of the input files' owners, groups, file modes, or modification times. This seems like good news for reproducible builds.
Unfortunately, when using makes libxx(*.a) syntax for creating archives, make needs the timestamp of the file in order to decide to update it or not. With the current deterministic behavior of ar, the timestamp is always 0. This is behaviour that is not backwards compatible (as can be seen in the bug report #798804 and #798913). Some operations, instead of being no-ops, now rebuild theg/Lunar archive. T think the change, because of the benefits of the reproducible builds, are a good thing, but I also think that they are not visible to the general user base (not all the users of ar and make are debian developers, and the release is not the only thing built using ar and make). My recommendations is a NEWS file entry for binutils and make; and a mention in the release announcement for reproducible builds. I have uploaded a version of make the defaults to adding U to the ARFLAGS, but, on research and reflection, I would be open to reverting that and adding a NEWS entry. Manoj -- Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Manoj Srivastava <sriva...@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/> 4096R/C5779A1C E37E 5EC5 2A01 DA25 AD20 05B6 CF48 9438 C577 9A1C