Re: [RFC] Proposal for new source format

["Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 11:18:24AM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote:
> On Tue, 2019-10-22 at 16:52 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > That seems excessively pessimistic.  What about Git makes you think
> > it's impossible to create a reproducible source package?
> 
> Has it been done?  Given this point has been raised several times
> before if it hasn't been done by now I think it's reasonable to assume
> it's difficult, and thinking that it's so is not excessively
> pessimistic.

Generating a reproducible source package given a particuar git commit
is trivial.  All you have to do is use "git archive".  For example:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Generate the e2fsprogs release tar ball
#

commit=HEAD

if test -n "$1" ; then
    commit="$1"
fi

ver=`git show ${commit}:version.h | grep E2FSPROGS_VERSION  \
	| awk '{print $3}' | tr \" " " | awk '{print $1}'`
fn=e2fsprogs-${ver}.tar.gz

git archive --prefix=e2fsprogs-${ver}/ ${commit} | gzip -9n > $fn
echo "Generated $fn"

Note that most of the hair is in deciding what *name* the source tar
file.

						- Ted