Subject: bug#72232: "make dist" is not reproducible

From: Bruno Haible <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2024 18:18:06 +0200

Hi,

Subsequent runs of "make dist" in the same environment produce tarballs with
different contents.

How to reproduce:

In a git checkout of coreutils, do:

$ echo snapshot > .tarball-version
$ ./configure; make -k maintainer-clean
$ ./bootstrap
$ ./configure; make dist
$ mkdir 1; (cd 1 && tar xf ../*.tar.gz)
$ make; make dist
$ mkdir 2; (cd 2 && tar xf ../*.tar.gz)
$ diff -r -q 1 2

The last command produces a difference:

$ diff -r -q 1 2
Files 1/coreutils-snapshot/.timestamp and 2/coreutils-snapshot/.timestamp differ
$ cat 1/coreutils-snapshot/.timestamp
1721577765
$ cat 2/coreutils-snapshot/.timestamp
1721577832

Can this be avoided? Can the contents of '.timestamp' always be the same?
(Wouldn't it be enough to give it a different modification time, each time?)

Bruno