Subject: bug#26247: Gettext introduces timestamps in .mo files

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2020 11:32:54 +0100

Hi Simon,

zimoun <[email-masked]> skribis:

> On Fri, 24 Mar 2017 at 23:54, [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès) wrote:
>
>> Gettext 0.19.8.1 (current core-updates,
>> 77ab6983a19ef307558ab2607920158d6bb94ba8) introduces timestamps in .mo
>> file, without honoring SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, which leads to
>> non-reproducible builds (for example ‘guix’).
>
> Is it still relevant?  Since Gettext is now at 0.20.1.  How can I
> reproduce the issue?

I still see this:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ guix challenge guix --substitute-urls="https://ci.guix.gnu.org https://bayfront.guix.gnu.org"
updating substitutes from 'https://bayfront.guix.gnu.org'... 100.0%
/gnu/store/babcmx68gkfxwzr3rmccan88dqjiqzb4-guix-1.2.0-3.35a32fe contents differ:
  no local build for '/gnu/store/babcmx68gkfxwzr3rmccan88dqjiqzb4-guix-1.2.0-3.35a32fe'
  https://ci.guix.gnu.org/nar/lzip/babcmx68gkfxwzr3rmccan88dqjiqzb4-guix-1.2.0-3.35a32fe: 13wvxga668grzs0p6sp0ghvdiy96nc9w71vs11djjkypsaf7wpw1
  https://bayfront.guix.gnu.org/nar/lzip/babcmx68gkfxwzr3rmccan88dqjiqzb4-guix-1.2.0-3.35a32fe: 1rpwil9h2whjd9dbwpikxn8prkg924nhljglwj9yjijh578nlfr8
  differing files:
    /share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES/guix.mo
    /share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES/guix-packages.mo
    /share/locale/en@boldquot/LC_MESSAGES/guix.mo
    /share/locale/en@boldquot/LC_MESSAGES/guix-packages.mo
    /share/info/guix-cookbook.de.info.gz
    /lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache/guix/workers.go
    /lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache/guix/ui.go
    /lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache/guix/swh.go
    /lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache/guix/svn-download.go
[…]
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

‘--diff=diffoscope’ is not an option here because it takes too long
looking at all the .go files…

A focused diff shows this:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ diffoscope --exclude-directory-metadata=yes /tmp/{t1,t2}/share/locale/en@quot/
--- /tmp/t1/share/locale/en@quot/
+++ /tmp/t2/share/locale/en@quot/
│   --- /tmp/t1/share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES
├── +++ /tmp/t2/share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES
│ │   --- /tmp/t1/share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES/guix-packages.mo
│ ├── +++ /tmp/t2/share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES/guix-packages.mo
│ │ ├── msgunfmt {}
│ │ │ @@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
│ │ │  msgid ""
│ │ │  msgstr ""
│ │ │  "Project-Id-Version: guix 1.2.0-3.35a32fe\n"
│ │ │  "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: [email-masked]\n"
│ │ │ -"PO-Revision-Date: 2020-11-29 18:33+0000\n"
│ │ │ +"PO-Revision-Date: 2020-12-02 10:10+0000\n"
│ │ │  "Last-Translator: Automatically generated\n"
│ │ │  "Language-Team: none\n"
│ │ │  "Language: en@quot\n"
│ │ │  "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
│ │ │  "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
│ │ │  "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
│ │ │  "Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n"
│ │   --- /tmp/t1/share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES/guix.mo
│ ├── +++ /tmp/t2/share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES/guix.mo
│ │ ├── msgunfmt {}
│ │ │ @@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
│ │ │  msgid ""
│ │ │  msgstr ""
│ │ │  "Project-Id-Version: guix 1.2.0-3.35a32fe\n"
│ │ │  "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: [email-masked]\n"
│ │ │ -"PO-Revision-Date: 2020-11-29 18:33+0000\n"
│ │ │ +"PO-Revision-Date: 2020-12-02 10:10+0000\n"
│ │ │  "Last-Translator: Automatically generated\n"
│ │ │  "Language-Team: none\n"
│ │ │  "Language: en@quot\n"
│ │ │  "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
│ │ │  "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
│ │ │  "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
│ │ │  "Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Ludo’.