Subject: Re: [bug#74411] freedict-dictionaries build non-deterministic

From: Nicolas Graves <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:43:26 +0100

On 2024-11-18 06:37, Runciter via Guix-patches via wrote:

> The build of the package freedict-dictionaries is non-deterministic, at
> least because the output dictionaries are compressed by the utility
> dictzip, which includes a timestamp in the compressed file headers.

Are you sure there are no options at compression time to force
determinism on the archive?

Usually, there are some, see tar invocations for instance: 
(invoke "tar" "cvfa" (string-append this-file ".tar")
      "--mtime=1" "--owner=root:0" "--group=root:0" ; determinism
      "--sort=name" ".")

The sort is here for determinism too.

>
> I have not confirmed it yet but I think I could fix it: it would involve
> a patch to the freedict-tools package, and then output dictionaries of
> freedict-dictionaries would not be compressed.
>
> The maintainers should just tell me if it's worth it to fix
> non-determinism in this way: we have to carry forward a patch (unless a
> better idea comes up), and we lose the benefit of compressing the outputs.

-- 
Best regards,
Nicolas Graves