Re: [OE-core] [PATCH 7/7] reproducible: Drop BUILD_REPRODUCIBLE_BINARIES variable

[Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Thu, 2021-10-14 at 09:46 -0400, Bruce Ashfield wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 9:45 AM Alexandre Belloni
> <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com> wrote:
> > 
> > On 14/10/2021 08:38:46-0400, Bruce Ashfield wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 8:32 AM Richard Purdie
> > > <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > On Thu, 2021-10-14 at 08:28 -0400, Bruce Ashfield wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 8:10 AM Richard Purdie
> > > > > <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > We want things to be reproduicble and the variable doesn't really change
> > > > > > much any more. Drop the remaining uses and make those code paths always
> > > > > > active.
> > > > > 
> > > > > It wasn't clear to me from reading the patch.  What is the way that
> > > > > someone would now get the current timestamp into a kernel build, if
> > > > > that's the behaviour that they want ?
> > > > 
> > > > With this change they probably don't get the option. If we want that to be
> > > > configurable, we should probably move the control to a different variable which
> > > > is focused specifically on the kernel. The hardest bit is probably picking a
> > > > name!
> > > 
> > > This is probably the most surprising feature of reproducibility for
> > > kernel developers, and a question that I've gotten multiple times
> > > ("what happened to my timestamp ?" followed by "how do I turn this
> > > off?")
> > > 
> > > Most kernel developers already don't really like the "yocto workflow",
> > > and this adds another element in that category. It is common in a
> > > debug scenario to check the timestamp of the running kernel to make
> > > sure that you've actually booted the one you just built.
> > > 
> > 
> > But do kernel developers actually do their development using YP?
> > I definitively not. I do all my BSP work outside of any build system and
> > then I finally integrate everything once this is working/ready.
> 
> Many do, yup!

I've sent out a new version of this patch with an additional one which gives
people a setting to control the timestamp for the kernel.

Cheers,

Richard