How to Fix it Yourself If what you, like me, need is simply for Bluetooth Audio to work with AAC in Debian s default desktop environment², then you ll need to rebuild the pipewire package to include the AAC codec. While the current version in Debian main has been built with AAC deliberately disabled, it is trivial to enable if you can install a version of the fdk-aac library. I preface this with the usual caveats when it comes to patent and licensing controversies. I am not a lawyer, building this package and/or using it could get you into legal trouble. These instructions have only been tested on an up-to-date copy of Debian 12.

1. Install pipewire s build dependencies

   sudo apt install build-essential devscripts
   sudo apt build-dep pipewire
   

2. Install libfdk-aac-dev

   sudo apt install libfdk-aac-dev
   

   If the above doesn t work you ll likely need to enable non-free and try again

   sudo sed -i 's/main/main non-free/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
   sudo apt update
   

   Alternatively, if you wish to ensure you are maximally license-compliant and patent un-infringing³, you can instead build fdk-aac-free which includes only those components of AAC that are known to be patent-free³. This is what should eventually end up in Debian to resolve this problem (see below).

   sudo apt install git-buildpackage
   mkdir fdk-aac-source
   cd fdk-aac-source
   git clone https://salsa.debian.org/multimedia-team/fdk-aac
   cd fdk-aac
   gbp buildpackage
   sudo dpkg -i ../libfdk-aac2_*deb ../libfdk-aac-dev_*deb
   

3. Get the pipewire source code

   mkdir pipewire-source
   cd pipewire-source
   apt source pipewire
   

   This will create a bunch of files within the pipewire-source directory, but you ll only need the pipewire-<version> folder, this contains all the files you ll need to build the package, with all the debian-specific patches already applied. Note that you don t want to run the apt source command as root, as it will then create files that your regular user cannot edit.
4. Fix the dependencies and build options To fix up the build scripts to use the fdk-aac library, you need to save the following as pipewire-source/aac.patch

   --- debian/control.orig
   +++ debian/control
   @@ -40,8 +40,8 @@
                modemmanager-dev,
                pkg-config,
                python3-docutils,
   -               systemd [linux-any]
   -Build-Conflicts: libfdk-aac-dev
   +               systemd [linux-any],
   +               libfdk-aac-dev
    Standards-Version: 4.6.2
    Vcs-Browser: https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/pipewire
    Vcs-Git: https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/pipewire.git
   --- debian/rules.orig
   +++ debian/rules
   @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
    		-Dauto_features=enabled \
    		-Davahi=enabled \
    		-Dbluez5-backend-native-mm=enabled \
   -		-Dbluez5-codec-aac=disabled \
   +		-Dbluez5-codec-aac=enabled \
    		-Dbluez5-codec-aptx=enabled \
    		-Dbluez5-codec-lc3=enabled \
    		-Dbluez5-codec-lc3plus=disabled \
   

   Then you ll need to run patch from within the pipewire-<version> folder created by apt source:

   patch -p0 < ../aac.patch
   

5. Build pipewire

   cd pipewire-*
   debuild
   

   Note that you will likely see an error from debsign at the end of this process, this is harmless, you simply don t have a GPG key set up to sign your newly-built package⁴. Packages don t need to be signed to be installed, and debsign uses a somewhat non-standard signing process that dpkg does not check anyway.

1. Install libspa-0.2-bluetooth

   sudo dpkg -i libspa-0.2-bluetooth_*.deb
   

2. Restart PipeWire and/or Reboot

   sudo reboot
   

   Theoretically there s a set of services to restart here that would get pipewire to pick up the new library, probably just pipewire itself. But it s just as easy to restart and ensure everything is using the correct library.

Why This is a slightly unusual situation, as the fdk-aac library is licensed under what even the GNU project acknowledges is a free software license. However, this license explicitly informs the user that they need to acquire a patent license to use this software⁵:

3. NO PATENT LICENSE NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED LICENSES TO ANY PATENT CLAIMS, including without limitation the patents of Fraunhofer, ARE GRANTED BY THIS SOFTWARE LICENSE. Fraunhofer provides no warranty of patent non-infringement with respect to this software. You may use this FDK AAC Codec software or modifications thereto only for purposes that are authorized by appropriate patent licenses.

To quote the GNU project:

Because of this, and because the license author is a known patent aggressor, we encourage you to be careful about using or redistributing software under this license: you should first consider whether the licensor might aim to lure you into patent infringement.

AAC is covered by a number of patents, which expire at some point in the 2030s⁶. As such the current version of the library is potentially legally dubious to ship with any other software, as it could be considered patent-infringing³.

Fedora s solution Since 2017, Fedora has included a modified version of the library as fdk-aac-free, see the announcement and the bugzilla bug requesting review. This version of the library includes only the AAC LC profile, which is believed to be entirely patent-free³. Based on this, there is an open bug report in Debian requesting that the fdk-aac package be moved to the main component and that the pipwire package be updated to build against it.

The Debian NEW queue To resolve these bugs, a version of fdk-aac-free has been uploaded to Debian by Jeremy Bicha. However, to make it into Debian proper, it must first pass through the ftpmaster s NEW queue. The current version of fdk-aac-free has been in the NEW queue since July 2023. Based on conversations in some of the bugs above, it s been there since at least 2022⁷. I hope this helps anyone stuck with AAC to get their hardware working for them while we wait for the package to eventually make it through the NEW queue. Discuss on Hacker News

1. Such as, for example, any Apple AirPods, which only support AAC AFAICT.
2. Which, as of Debian 12 is GNOME 3 under Wayland with PipeWire.
3. I m not a lawyer, I don t know what kinds of infringement might or might not be possible here, do your own research, etc. ^{2 3 4}
4. And if you DO have a key setup with debsign you almost certainly don t need these instructions.
5. This was originally phrased as explicitly does not grant any patent rights. It was pointed out on Hacker News that this is not exactly what it says, as it also includes a specific note that you ll need to acquire your own patent license. I ve now quoted the relevant section of the license for clarity.
6. Wikipedia claims the base patents expire in 2031, with the extensions expiring in 2038, but its source for these claims is some guy s spreadsheet in a forum. The same discussion also brings up Wikipedia s claim and casts some doubt on it, so I m not entirely sure what s correct here, but I didn t feel like doing a patent deep-dive today. If someone can provide a clear answer that would be much appreciated.
7. According to Jeremy B cha: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1021370#17

$ sudo apt install ubuntu-dev-tools

$ mkdir mesa-downgrade; cd mesa-downgrade

$ pull-lp-debs mesa 21.3.5-1ubuntu2

• pull-lp-source downloads source package from Launchpad.
• pull-lp-debs downloads debs package(s) from Launchpad.
• pull-lp-ddebs downloads dbgsym/ddebs package(s) from Launchpad.
• pull-lp-udebs downloads udebs package(s) from Launchpad.
• pull-debian-* same as pull-lp-* but for Debian packages.

$ sudo apt install --only-upgrade --mark-auto ./*.deb

$ sudo apt dist-upgrade

$ sudo apt-mark hold

$ cd .. ; rm -ri mesa-downgrade

$ sudo apt install libegl-mesa0/jammy

$ apt list --installed --all-versions  grep local] --after-context 1

• Allison Randal (wendar)
• Carsten Schoenert (tijuca)
• Jeremy Bicha (jbicha)
• Luca Boccassi (bluca)
• Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)
• Elana Hashman (ehashman)

• Ervin Heged s
• Tom Marble
• Lukas Schwaighofer
• Philippe Thierry

• [1] https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-mate-team@lists.alioth.deb...

• Changing the Global Dark Theme option required closing any currently running apps and reopening them to get the correct theme.
• It didn t work for sandboxed apps (Flatpak and Snap)
• It only worked for gtk3 apps (it can t work on gtk2 apps)
• Some themes never supported a Dark variant. The switch wouldn t do anything at all with a theme like that.

Reproducibility
---------------
Packages should build reproducibly, which for the purposes of this
document [#]_ means that given
- a version of a source package unpacked at a given path;
- a set of versions of installed build dependencies;
- a set of environment variable values;
- a build architecture; and
- a host architecture,
repeatedly building the source package for the build architecture on
any machine of the host architecture with those versions of the build
dependencies installed and exactly those environment variable values
set will produce bit-for-bit identical binary packages.
It is recommended that packages produce bit-for-bit identical binaries
even if most environment variables and build paths are varied.  It is
intended for this stricter standard to replace the above when it is
easier for packages to meet it.
.. [#]
   This is Debian's precisification of the  reproducible-builds.org
   definition  _.

• Holger Levsen wrote a blog post briefly describing the background and implications of this. To quote him: "we are not 94% done yet, rather more like half done or so. We still need tools and processes to enable anyone to indepently verify that a given binary comes from the sources it is said to be coming, this will involve distributing .buildinfo files and providing user interfaces in APT and elsewhere and probably also systematic rebuilds by us and other parties. And 6% or 7% of the archive is still a lot of packages, eg. in Buster we currently still have 273 unreproducible key packages and for a large part we don't have patches yet so there is still a lot of work ahead."
• There were discussion threads on Hacker News and Reddit.
• Our long-term goal is that Policy mandates that packages "must" be reproducible, but for that we need to show further progress and also reach a consensus on .buildinfo files and much more.

• Bernhard M. Wiedemann:
  • qt5/base, SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support.

• Adrian Bunk:
  • #872262 filed against jellyfish.
  • #872675 filed against pdp.
  • #872678 filed against gem.
• Chris Lamb:
  • #872453 filed against isa-support.
  • #872459 filed against python-numpy.
  • #872460 filed against gcab, forwarded upstream.
  • #872514 filed against devscripts.
  • #872728 filed against desktop-file-utils.
  • #872729 filed against gtk+2.0, forwarded upstream, found via a reproducibility issue in Tails.
• Federico Brega:
  • #872285 filed against pyqt5.
• Jeremy Bicha:
  • #871963 filed against birdfont.
• Philip Rinn:
  • #872184 filed against quilt.

• Mattia Rizzolo:
  • console-data (for bug #799871).

• Added nondeterministic_output_generated_by_gcab.
• Added build_path_captured_by_python_numpy_misc_util.
• Added captures_build_path_in_sphinx_attr_links.
• Re-added nondeterminstic_ordering_in_gsettings_glib_enums_xml.

• Adrian Bunk (59)
• Bastien Roucari s (1)
• James Clarke (1)
• Jeremy Bicha (1)

• Ximin Luo:
  • presenters: html: Don't traverse children whose parents were already limited (Closes: #871413)
  • On a non-GNU system, prefer tools that start with "g" for certain whitelisted commands. (Closes: #871029)
  • Add a --tool-prefix-binutils CLI flag. (Closes: #869868)
• Chris Lamb:
  • Temporarily revert "Bump Standards-Version to 4.0.1" to avoid spurious CI test failures.
  • comparators.xml: Use name attribute over path to avoid leaking comparison full path in output.
  • Code style fixes.

• Chris Lamb:
  • Add simple autopkgtest.

• Ximin Luo:
  • Choose an existent HOME for the "control" build. (Closes: #860428)
  • Update debian/changelog with Santiago's changes.
• Santiago Torres:
  • Abstract parts of autopkgtest to support running on non-Debian systems.
  • Add a --host-distro flag to support that too.

1. For one thing, GNOME is thoroughly tested with one window button; adding a second one shouldn t be too big of a deal, but maybe adding a 3rd button might not work as well with the design of some apps.
2. When I maximize an app, I either double-click the titlebar or drag the app to the top of the screen so a maximize button just isn t needed.
3. A dedicated maximize just doesn t make as much sense when there is more than one possible maximization state. Besides traditional maximize, there is now left and right semi-maximize. There s even a goal for GNOME 3.26 to support quarter-tiling .

• Ikey Doherty ported Tweak Tool from python2 to python3.
• Florian M llner switched the build system to meson. For an app like Tweak Tool, meson makes the build faster and simpler for developers to maintain.
• For more details about what s changed, see the log and the NEWS
• GNOME Tweak Tool 3.26 will be released alongside GNOME 3.26 in mid-September.

• I released the final version 2 of debian-games for Stretch, a collection of metapackages that make it easier to install one s favorite games. No surprises here, but two games were removed from Debian and some others didn t make it into Stretch, so an update of the debian/control file was necessary.
• I could close three RC bugs in ufoai (#860680) and slashem (#860393), thanks to the analysis and help from Bernhard belacker, and one in tecnoballz. (#861268)
• I reviewed and sponsored gnome-games-app and retro-gtk for Jeremy Bicha. The Gnome application is basically a game browser and a unified interface to access various games, engines and emulators.
• I adopted torcs, a racing car simulator, updated the package to the latest upstream release and completely overhauled the packaging. This is still work in progress but I think I can upload the new version in May.

• I prepared security updates for bouncycastle, logback, activemq, tomcat 7 and tomcat 8 which were later accepted for Stretch and Jessie.
• New upstream releases this month: hsqldb and robocode.
• We had to deal with a weird bug in libnb-platform18-java respectively libjna-jni (#858876). We are still not sure why the JNA system library was not found by Netbeans but we could find a way to resolve it. I took the opportunity to fix another annoying bug in Netbeans and added the missing dependencies for some symlinked system JAR files.
• Last but not least I made the test results in jnr-posix non-fatal (#860691) until we receive more information from upstream why two tests fail on i386. Since the package is arch:all and completes all tests on amd64 successfully, the RC bug was later marked as stretch ignore by the release team.

• From 10. April until 16. April I was in charge of our LTS frontdesk. I triaged security issues in wavpack, binutils, tiff, tiff3, imagemagick, wireshark, elfutils, libosip2, feh, freetype, web2py and libplist.
• DLA-888-1. Issued a security update for logback fixing 1 CVE.
• DLA-893-1. Issued a security update for bouncycastle fixing 1 CVE.
• DLA-924-1. Issued a security update for tomcat7 fixing 2 CVE.
• DLA-900-1. Issued a security update for freetype. Later it was determined that freetype in Wheezy was not affected and the change was reverted.
• DLA-899-1. Issued a security update for feh fixing 1 CVE.
• DLA-902-1. Issued a security update for imagemagick fixing 2 CVE.
• DLA-911-1. Issued a security update for tiff fixing 11 CVE.
• DLA-912-1. Issued a security update for tiff3 fixing 8 CVE.
• DLA-913-1. Issued a security update for activemq fixing 1 CVE.
• DLA-929-1. Issued a security update for libpodofo fixing 7 CVE.

• I packaged a new major version of Osmo, a personal organizer and calendar application. It has been completely converted to GTK3 and WebKitGtk2 now.

• Uploaded a new version of the debian-multimedia blends metapackages
• Uploaded the latest abcmidi
• Uploaded the latest node-process-nextick-args
• Prepared version 1.0.2 of libdrumstick for experimental, as a first step for the transition. It was sponsored by James Cowgill.
• Prepared a new node-inline-source-map package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
• Uploaded kmetronome to experimental as part of the libdrumstick transition.
• Prepared a new node-js-yaml package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
• Uploaded version 4.2.4 of Gramps.
• Prepared a new version of vmpk which I am going to adopt, as part of the libdrumstick transition. I tried splitting the documentation into a separate package, but this proved difficult, and in the end I missed the transition freeze deadline for Debian Stretch.
• Prepared a backport of Gramps 4.2.4, which was sponsored by IOhannes m zm lnig as Gramps is new for jessie-backports.
• Began a final push to get kosmtik packaged and into the NEW queue before the impending Debian freeze for Stretch. Unfortunately, many dependencies need updating, which also depend on packages not yet in Debian. Also pushed to finish all the new packages for node-tape, which someone else has decided to take responsibility for.
• Uploaded node-cross-spawn-async to fix a Release Critical bug.
• Prepared a new node-chroma-js package, but this is unfortunately blocked by several out of date & missing dependencies.
• Prepared a new node-husl package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
• Prepared a new node-resumer package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
• Prepared a new node-object-inspect package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
• Removed node-string-decoder from the archive, as it was broken and turned out not to be needed anymore.
• Uploaded a fix for node-inline-source-map which was failing tests. This turned out to be due to node-tap being upgraded to version 8.0.0. J r my Lal very quickly provided a fix in the form of a Pull Request upstream, so I was able to apply the same patch in Debian.

• Prepared a merge of the latest blends package from Debian in order to be able to merge the multimedia-blends package later. This was sponsored by Daniel Holbach.
• Prepared an application to become an Ubuntu Contributing Developer. Unfortunately, this was later declined. I was completely unprepared for the Developer Membership Board meeting on IRC after my holiday. I had had no time to chase for endorsements from previous sponsors, and the application was not really clear about the fact that I was not actually applying for upload permission yet. No matter, I intend to apply again later once I have more evidence & support on my application page.
• Added my blog to Planet Ubuntu, and this will hopefully be the first post that appears there.
• Prepared a merge of the latest debian-multimedia blends meta-package package from Debian. In Ubuntu Studio, we have the multimedia-puredata package seeded so that we get all the latest Puredata packages in one go. This was sponsored by Michael Terry.
• Prepared a backport of Ardour as part of the Ubuntu Studio plan to do regular backports. This is still waiting for sponsorship if there is anyone reading this that can help with that.
• Did a tweak to the Ubuntu Studio seeds and prepared an update of the Ubuntu Studio meta-packages. However, Adam Conrad did the work anyway as part of his cross-flavour release work without noticing my bug & request for sponsorship. So I closed the bug.
• Updated the Ubuntu Studio wiki to expand on the process for updating our seeds and meta-packages. Hopefully, this will help new contributors to get involved in this area in the future.
• Took part in the testing and release of the Ubuntu Studio Trusty 14.04.5 point release.
• Took part in the testing and release of the Ubuntu Studio Yakkety Beta 1 release.
• Prepared a backport of Ansible but before I could chase up what to do about the fact that ansible-fireball was no longer part of the Ansible package, some one else did the backport without noticing my bug. So I closed the bug.
• Prepared an update of the Ubuntu Studio meta-packages. This was sponsored by Jeremy Bicha.
• Prepared an update to the ubuntustudio-default-settings package. This switched the Ubuntu Studio desktop theme to Numix-Blue, and reverted some commits to drop the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme package fom the archive. This had caused quite a bit of controversy and discussion on IRC due to the transition being a little too close to the release date for Yakkety. This was sponsored by Iain Lane (Laney).
• Prepared the Numix Blue update for the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme package. This was also sponsored by Iain Lane (Laney). I should thank Krytarik here for the initial Numix Blue theme work here (on the lightdm theme & default settings packages).
• Provided a patch for gfxboot-theme-ubuntu which has a bug which is regularly reported during ISO testing, because the Try Ubuntu Studio without installing option was not a translatable string and always appeared in English. Colin Watson merged this, so hopefully it will be translated by the time of the next release.
• Took part in the testing and release of the Ubuntu Studio Yakkety 16.10 release.
• After a hint from Jeremy Bicha, I prepared a patch that adds a desktop file for Imagemagick to the ubuntustudio-default-settings package. This will give us a working menu item in Ubuntu Studio whilst we wait for the bug to be fixed upstream in Debian. Next month I plan to finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition, including dropping ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme from the Ubuntu Studio seeds. I will include this fix at the same time.

• At other times when I have had a spare moment, I have been working on resurrecting my old Family History website. It was originally produced in my Windows XP days, and I was no longer able to edit it in Linux. I decided to convert it to Jekyll. First I had to extract the old HTML from where the website is hosted using the HTTrack Website Copier. Now, I am in the process of switching the structure to the standard Jekyll template approach. I will need to switch to a nice Jekyll based theme, as as the old theming was pretty complex. I pushed the code to my Github repository for safe keeping.

• Ensure node-tape makes it through into Stretch.
• Work on all the dependencies needed to get kosmtik into Stretch.
• Convert Cree.py from QT4 to QT5 to allow it to re-enter Stretch.

• Add the Ubuntu Studio Manual Testsuite to the package tracker, and try to encourage some testing of the newest versions of our priority packages.
• Finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition including an update to the ubuntustudio-meta packages.
• Reapply to become a Contributing Developer.
• Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in.

• Continue working to convert my Family History website to Jekyll.
• Try and resurrect my old Gammon one-name study Drupal website from a backup and push it to the new GoONS Website project.

ENVIRONMENT
[...]
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH  belongs to the specs of reproducible-builds.org.  It
is supposed to be either undefined or to contain a decimal number which
tells the seconds since january 1st 1970. If it contains a number, then
it is used as time value to set the  default  of  --modification-date=,
--gpt_disk_guid,  and  --set_all_file_dates.  Startup files and program
options can override the effect of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.

• cadencii/3.3.9+svn20110818.r1732-5 by Ying-Chun Liu, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• cfengine3/3.7.4-3 by Antonio Radici.
• findbugs/3.1.0~preview2-1 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• gcpegg/5.1-14 by Bdale Garbee, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• gnunet-gtk/0.10.1-4 by Bertrand Marc, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• konwert/1.8-12 by Yann Dirson, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• link-grammar/5.3.8-2 by Jeremy Bicha, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• metastudent-data/2.0.1-1 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• pixmap/2.6pl4-20 by Paul Slootman, original patch by Chris Lamb Maria Valentina Marin a.k.a. Akira.
• python-afl/0.5.4-2 by Daniel Stender.
• tf5/5.0beta8-6 by Russ Allbery, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• triplane/1.0.8-2 by Markus Koschanyover, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• vips/8.3.3-1 by Laszlo Boszormenyi, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• xzgv/0.9.1-4 by Theodore Y. Ts'o, original patch by Chris Lamb.

• vulkan/1.0.21.0+dfsg1-1 by Timo Aaltonen.

• cappuccino/0.5.1-4 by Breno Leitao, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• darkice/1.3-0.1 by Nicolas Bouleng.
• flask-restful/0.3.5-1 by Ond ej Nov , original patch by Chris Lamb.
• kodi/16.1+dfsg1-2 by Balint Reczey, original patch by Lukas Rechberger.
• libaws/3.3.2-3 by Nicolas Bouleng.
• liblog4ada/1.3-1 by Nicolas Bouleng.
• libxmlezout/1.06.1-8 by Nicolas Bouleng.
• ruby-rmagick/2.15.4+dfsg-2 by Antonio Terceir, original patch from Chris Lamb.
• taggrepper/0.05-2 by Kumar Appaiah, original patch and original patch from Maria Valentina Marin.
• xotcl/1.6.8-2 by Stefan Sobernig, original patch by Chris Lamb.

• #834755 against apt-cacher-ng by Chris Lamb.
• #834976 against auto-apt-proxy by Chris Lamb.
• #834549 against botan1.10 by Chris Lamb.
• #834861 against cookiecutter by Chris Lamb.
• #834779 against dicom3tools by Chris Lamb.
• #834859 against echoping by Chris Lamb.
• #834983 against eyed3 by Chris Lamb.
• #834735 against filepp by Chris Lamb.
• #834957 against flashrom by Chris Lamb.
• #834773 against gkrellm by Chris Lamb.
• #834292 against gr-radar by Chris Lamb.
• #834956 against ircd-irc2 by Chris Lamb.
• #834897 against jpy by Chris Lamb.
• #834452 against libdc0 by Chris Lamb.
• #834324 against libnss-ldap by Reiner Herrmann.
• #834945 against libquvi by Chris Lamb.
• #834534 against librep by Chris Lamb.
• #834537 against mozvoikko by Chris Lamb.
• #834857 against nagios-nrpe by Chris Lamb.
• #834316 against openocd by Reiner Herrmann.
• #834993 against oss4 by Reiner Herrmann.
• #834302 against pd-flite by Reiner Herrmann.
• #834754 against phpab by Chris Lamb.
• #834279 against phpldapadmin by Chris Lamb.
• #834277 against pybit by Chris Lamb.
• #834553 against pyicu by Chris Lamb.
• #834541 against ruby-pg by Chris Lamb.
• #835051 against sheepdog by Chris Lamb.
• #834896 against ttf-tiresias by Chris Lamb.
• #834780 against tuxpaint-config by Chris Lamb.
• #834988 against twitter-bootstrap3 by Chris Lamb.
• #834776 against uhub by Chris Lamb.
• #835061 against varnish by Chris Lamb.

• Chris Lamb pinged 164 bugs he filed more than 90 days ago which have a patch and had no maintainer reaction.

• Added user_in_documentation_generated_by_gsdoc
• Added locale_differences_in_pom

• Chris Lamb (16)
• Santiago Vila (2)

< h01ger>   https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/rb-pkg/unstable/amd64/diffoscope.html shows these packages were built on amd64:
< h01ger>    bd21db708fe91c01ba1c9cb35b9d41a7c9b0db2b 62288 diffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>    366200bf2841136a4c8f8c30bdc87057d59a4cdd 20146 trydiffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>   and on i386:
< h01ger>    bd21db708fe91c01ba1c9cb35b9d41a7c9b0db2b 62288 diffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>    366200bf2841136a4c8f8c30bdc87057d59a4cdd 20146 trydiffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>   and on armhf:
< h01ger>    bd21db708fe91c01ba1c9cb35b9d41a7c9b0db2b 62288 diffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>    366200bf2841136a4c8f8c30bdc87057d59a4cdd 20146 trydiffoscope_59_all.deb

• show percentage of results in the last 24/48h (h01ger)
• switch python database backend to SQLAlchemy (Valerie)
• vary build path varitation for unstable and experimental for all architectures. (h01ger)

• Ceridwen described using autopkgtest code to communicate with containers and how to test the container handling.
• reprotest 0.1 has been accepted into Debian unstable, and any user reports, bug reports, feature requests, etc. would be appreciated. This is still an alpha release, and nothing is set in stone.

• Matthias Klose uploaded doxygen/1.8.11-3 to Debian unstable (closing #792201) with the upstream patch improving SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support by using UTC as timezone when parsing the value. This was the last patch we were carrying in our repository, thus this upload obsoletes the version in our experimental repository.
• cmake/3.5.2-2 was uploaded by Felix Geyer, which sorts file lists obtained with file(GLOB).
• Dmitry Shachnev uploaded sphinx/1.4.4-2, which fixes a timezone related issue when SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is set.

• #829365 against pdl by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829362 against ruby-ronn by Chris Lamb: please make the output reproducible.
• #829357 against ctop by Chris Lamb: please make the build reproducible.
• #829325 against txt2tags by Chris Lamb: please make the output reproducible.
• #829323 against pdl by Reiner Herrmann: please generated sorted output.
• #829322 against libpdl-netcdf-perl by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829320 against libpdl-io-hdf5-perl by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829297 against check-all-the-things by Chris Lamb: please make the build reproducible.
• #829296 against perl by Chris Lamb: please make the output of ParseXS.pm reproducible.
• #829295 against libextutils-parsexs-perl by Chris Lamb: please make the output reproducible.
• #829270 against tomsfastmath by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829263 against libmemcached-libmemcached-perl by Chris Lamb: please make the build reproducible.
• #829262 against slashem by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829261 against passwordsafe by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829249 against ncftp by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829133 against icon by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829129 against ayttm by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #829011 against link-grammar by Jeremy Bicha and Chris Lamb: please make the build reproducible.
• #829000 against fracplanet by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828994 against syncthing by Dhole: please make the build reproducible.
• #828993 against openttd by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828989 against ntp by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828977 against faust by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828971 against clasp by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828969 against dogecoin by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828909 against qtruby by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828906 against mailfilter by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828898 against lordsawar by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828891 against bbdb by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828890 against libsdl2-gfx by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828888 against aspell-en by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828876 against ario by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828867 against zephyr by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828856 against lrzsz by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828855 against wmweather by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828852 against moblin-icon-theme by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828810 against fakeroot by Juan Picca: [PATCH] Make the build reproducible.
• #828793 against minicom by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828791 against fio by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828790 against debiandoc-sgml-doc by Dhole: please make the build reproducible.
• #828788 against pyparted by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828786 against tcptraceroute by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828780 against iptraf by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828778 against module-assistant by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828766 against liblucy-perl by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828762 against slang2 by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828756 against python-reportlab by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828752 against mod-dnssd by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828749 against telepathy-salut by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828748 against libphonenumber by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828745 against directfb by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828683 against mc by Reiner Herrmann and Yury V. Zaytsev: please make the build reproducible.
• #828681 against keyutils by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828680 against debiandoc-sgml-doc-pt-br by Dhole: please make the build reproducible.
• #828639 against libmarpa-r2-perl by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828636 against libembperl-perl by Axel Beckert, Reiner Herrmann and gregor herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828635 against libnet-tclink-perl by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828628 against media-player-info by Reiner Herrmann: please make the build reproducible.
• #828627 against uim by Alexis Bienven e: please make the build reproducible (locale).
• #828226 against tiger by Alexis Bienven e: please make the build reproducible (environment, locale).
• #828222 against pygoocanvas by Chris Lamb: please make the build reproducible.
• #828216 against pyinfra by Daniel Stender: assertion error with timestamps.

• random_order_of_pdf_ids_generated_by_latex
• unsorted_pdl_output
• timestamps_in_output_generated_by_txt2tags
• random_order_in_documentation_generated_by_naturaldocs

• Reiner Herrmann clarified the help text for the input arguments.
• #829115 against diffoscope by Axel Beckert and Mattia Rizzolo:: /comparators/ps.py: TypeError: cannot use a string pattern on a bytes-like object.

• Chris Lamb made sure that .zhfst files are treated as ZIP files.

• Mattia Rizzolo uploaded pbuilder/0.225.1~bpo8+1 to jessie-backports and it has been installed on all build nodes. As a consequence all armhf and i386 builds will be done with eatmydata; this will hopefully cut down the build time by a noticable factor.