Subject: Re: bug#63044: [PATCH] gnu: python-setuptools: Disable date checking in bdist_egg.py

From: Brian Cully <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 May 2023 13:36:32 -0400

Lars-Dominik Braun <[email-masked]> writes:

> is it correct that this change is required only for packages 
> *not* using
> python-build-system? python-build-system itself already has a 
> phase
> called ”ensure-no-mtimes-pre-1980“, which should fix the issue 
> for
> all Python packages. Can we use that phase for affected packages 
> (two,
> so far) and/or factor it out of python-build-system?

I've only run into the issue with ‘gnu-build-system’, and your 
explanation that ‘python-build-system’ has an extra phase would 
explain why.

As for factoring it out of ‘python-build-system’, I gave this two 
attempts, but there didn't seem to be any good place for it; (guix 
build utils) caused the entire world to be rebuilt, and (guix 
utils) got me chided in IRC, though I don't know what the 
rationale was.

But given the fact that the date check will always fail, it makes 
sense to me to cut the problem at the source, hence the current 
version of this patch. It does cause a lot of rebuilding, as well, 
of course, but we're looking at a pretty big rebuild due to Python 
changes in the near future anyway to fix the issue with 
Yubikeys. My intention was for this patch to get bundled up with 
that.

Note that I have no idea what the true scope of the problem is, 
these are just the packages I had issues with because I install 
‘lxd’ and ‘autofs’. I don't have the guix-fu to check every 
package that uses either ‘python’, ‘python-tool-chain’, or 
‘python-setuptools’ but isn't already using one of the python 
build systems.

-bjc