Re: [PATCH] Use NEWS file date instead of build date

[David Smith <dsmith at redhat dot com>]

Hmm. I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense just to remove the DATE
stuff from configure.ac and stappaths.7.in. I'm not sure it adds much
value. For reference sake, here's the one and only place where DATE is
used. This is in stappaths.7.in:

This manual page was generated on @DATE@ for systemtap @VERSION@.

On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 9:00 AM, Bernhard M. Wiedemann
<bwiedemann@suse.de> wrote:
> as date in man page headers, in order to make builds reproducible.
> See https://reproducible-builds.org/ for why this is good.
>
> Also use UTC to be independent of timezone
>
> ---
> While working on making openSUSE Linux package builds reproducible,
> I found that the systemtap package would differ in the stappaths.7
> man page
>
> An alternative solution could use $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
> to allow to override the date but leave the default behaviour as before.
> But I think few people care about which date goes into the manual.
> ---
>  configure    | 2 +-
>  configure.ac | 2 +-
>  2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/configure b/configure
> index 099664f..1f0b64d 100755
> --- a/configure
> +++ b/configure
> @@ -11451,7 +11451,7 @@ $as_echo "$as_me: staprun will link $staprun_LIBS" >&6;}
>  $as_echo "$as_me: stapbpf will link $stapbpf_LIBS" >&6;}
>
>
> -date=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
> +date=`date -u -r NEWS +%Y-%m-%d`
>
>  cat >>confdefs.h <<_ACEOF
>  #define DATE "$date"
> diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
> index a5cb47c..a10fd83 100644
> --- a/configure.ac
> +++ b/configure.ac
> @@ -598,7 +598,7 @@ AC_MSG_NOTICE([stapbpf will link $stapbpf_LIBS])
>
>
>  dnl Plop in the build (configure) date
> -date=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
> +date=`date -u -r NEWS +%Y-%m-%d`
>  AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(DATE, "$date", [Configuration/build date])
>  AC_SUBST(DATE, "$date")
>
> --
> 2.13.6
>



-- 
David Smith
Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat