On Thursday, October 2, 2025 10:33:36 AM Mountain Standard Time Russ Allbery wrote: > Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> writes: > > Can you think of any way that using the Etc/GMT+12 and Etc/GMT-14 syntax > > would cause any *problems*? > > Yes: Etc/GMT+12 and Etc/GMT-14 generate different time zone abbreviations. > > % env TZ=Etc/GMT+12 date > Thu Oct 2 05:31:10 AM -12 2025 > % env TZ=Etc/GMT-14 date > Fri Oct 3 07:31:14 AM +14 2025 > > The point of using GMT+12 and GMT-12 is that they keep the same > (incorrect, but it doesn't really matter for this purpose) time zone > abbreviation for reproducibility testing: > > % env TZ=GMT+12 date > Thu Oct 2 05:32:09 AM GMT 2025 > % env TZ=GMT-12 date > Fri Oct 3 05:32:12 AM GMT 2025 > > Otherwise, you may get spurious reproducibility failures due to the > changed time zone abbreviation. > > I don't believe there is a mechanism to force the same time zone > abbreviation other than usig POSIX rule-based zones. Isn’t the exact *purpose* of the reproducible builds project to make sure that software compiles the same even when things like time zone abbreviations are different? So, if this produces failures, aren’t these the exact types of failures the reproducible builds project is trying to uncover? -- Soren Stoutner soren@debian.org
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