Subject: Re: [bug#38546] [00/11] Update Julia, Fix precompilation, add HTTP.jl

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2020 18:26:57 +0100

Hi Nicolò,

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 10:59, Nicolò Balzarotti <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The first patch (the one I mention in [#]) fixes _one source of_
> non-determinism (the stored mtime inside the precompile cache).  But
> others are present (precompiling the same file 2 times lead to
> differences even in file size, something I reported on [2]).  What I'm
> working on is trying to find out what other sources are and patch them,
> too.  I patched some c code (src/support/timefuncs.c) so that it follows
> SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH too.  This finally lead to same-size files.  I'm now
> working on parsing binary (.ji) files directly with julia built in
> function to have a textual representation of the differences.

Thank you for the explanations. Cool!

> I can't send SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH patches upstream until [3] is merged, as
> patching timefuncts leads to an endless test suite (as they were using
> time() to check for passed time. If time() always returns 1, tests
> sleeps forever).  Yesterday evening I completed that patch (and has been
> approved).  My plans are on finding the hopefully last source of
> non-determinism, patch it and send everything upstream (hoping they
> care).

Awesome if upstream are responsive.

> Thanks! I hope in a 1.4 release where everything is fixed ;)

I have seen that 1.4-rc1 is just released. Hope that everything about
reproducibility will be fixed. ;-)

I have not yet tried your patches. Sorry bit busy at work.
And I will not have any slot next week, so I will be back on the topic
after the Guix Days. Except if someone beats me. :-)
(see you there :-)

Thank you for improving the Julia ecosystem in Guix because Julia is
becoming quite popular.

Cheers,
simon