About a month later than I probably should have posted it, here s a recap of my Free Software activities in 2021. For previous years see 2019 + 2020. Again, this year had fewer contributions than I d like thanks to continuing fatigue about the state of the world, and trying to work on separation between work and leisure while working from home. I ve made some effort to improve that balance but it s still a work in progress.

Conferences No surprise, I didn t attend any in-person conferences in 2021. I find virtual conferences don t do a lot for me (a combination of my not carving time out for them in the same way, because not being at the conference means other things will inevitably intrude, and the lack of the social side) but I did get to attend a few of the DebConf21 talks, which was nice. I m hoping to make it to DebConf22 this year in person.

Debian Most of my contributions to Free software continue to happen within Debian. As part of the Data Protection Team I responded to various inbound queries to that team. Some of this involved chasing up other project teams who had been slow to respond - folks, if you re running a service that stores personal data about people then you need to be responsive to requests about it. Some of this was dealing with what look like automated scraping tools which send no information about the person making the request, and in all the cases we ve seen so far there s been no indication of any data about that person on any systems we have access to. Further team time was wasted dealing with the Princeton-Radboud Study on Privacy Law Implementation (though Matthew did the majority of the work on this). The Debian Keyring was possibly my largest single point of contribution. We re in a roughly 3 month rotation of who handles the keyring updates, and I handled 2021.03.24, 2021.04.09, 2021.06.25, 2021.09.25 + 2021.12.24 For Debian New Members I m mostly inactive as an application manager - we generally seem to have enough available recently. If that changes I ll look at stepping in to help, but I don t see that happening. I continue to be involved in Front Desk, having various conversations throughout the year with the rest of the team, but there s no doubt Mattia and Pierre-Elliott are the real doers at present. I did take part in an NM Committee appeals process. In terms of package uploads I continued to work on gcc-xtensa-lx106, largely doing uploads to deal with updates to the GCC version or packaging (8 + 9). sigrok had a few minor updates, libsigkrok 0.5.2-3, pulseview 0.4.2-3 as well as a new upstream release of sigrok CLI 0.7.2-1. There was a last minute pre-release upload of libserialport 0.1.1-4 thanks to a kernel change in v5.10.37 which removed termiox support. Despite still not writing any VHDL these days I continue to keep an eye on ghdl, because I found it a useful tool in the past. Last year that was just a build fix for LLVM 11.1.0 - 1.0.0+dfsg+5. Andreas Bombe has largely taken over more proactive maintenance, which is nice to see. I uploaded OpenOCD 0.11.0~rc1-2, cleaning up some packaging / dependency issues. This was followed by 0.11.0~rc2-1 as a newer release candidate. Sadly 0.11.0 did not make it in time for bullseye, but rc2 was fairly close and I uploaded 0.11.0-1 once bullseye was released. Finally I did a drive-by upload for garmin-forerunner-tools 0.10repacked-12, cleaning up some packaging issues and uploading it to salsa. My Forerunner 305 has died (after 11 years of sterling service) and the Forerunner 45 I ve replaced it with uses a different set of tools, so I decided it didn t make sense to pick up longer term ownership of the package.

Linux My Linux contributions continued to revolve around pushing MikroTik RB3011 support upstream. There was a minor code change to Set FIFO sizes for ipq806x (which fixed up the allowed MTU for the internal switch + VLANs). The rest was DTS related - adding ADM DMA + NAND definitions now that the ADM driver was merged, adding tsens details, adding USB port info and adding the L2CC and RPM details for IPQ8064. Finally I was able to update the RB3011 DTS to enable NAND + USB. With all those in I m down to 4 local patches against a mainline kernel, all of which are hacks that aren t suitable for submission upstream. 2 are for patching in details of the root device and ethernet MAC addresses, one is dealing with the fact the IPQ8064 has some reserved memory that doesn t play well with AUTO_ZRELADDR (there keeps being efforts to add some support for this via devicetree, but unfortunately it gets shot down every time), and the final one is a hack to turn off the LCD backlight by treating it as an LED (actually supporting the LCD properly is on my TODO list).

Personal projects 2021 didn t see any releases of onak. It s not dead, just resting, but Sequoia PGP is probably where you should be looking for a modern OpenPGP implementation. I continued work on my Desk Viking project, which is an STM32F103 based debug tool inspired by the Bus Pirate. The main addtion was some CCLib support (forking it in the process to move to Python 3 and add some speed ups) to allow me to program my Zigbee dongles, but I also added some 1-Wire search logic and some support for Linux emulation mode with VCD output to allow for a faster development cycle. I really want to try and get OpenOCD JTAG mode supported at some point, and have vague plans for an STM32F4 based version that have suffered from a combination of a silicon shortage and a lack of time. That wraps up 2021. I d like to say I m hoping to make more Free Software contributions this year, but I don t have a concrete plan yet for how that might happen, so I ll have to wait and see.

I had attended to Tokyo area debian seminar #157. The day s special guest is Chris Lamb, the Debian Project Leader in 2017. He had attended to Open Compliance Summit, so we invited him as our guest. The following pdf file is the day s presentation:

• http://tokyodebian.alioth.debian.org/pdf/debianmeetingresume201711-presentation.pdf

And Hideki Yamane(henrich) talked about a new idea of Debian distribution fresh , pull-based rolling release. The details would be published by him in a few days. There were some discussion, and we need to introduce more information aboud Japanese Debian/FLOSS scene, so now I am writing this article. Anything else, I ccould get good time with debian developers and community. Our community, especially in Japan, requires more new commers, young people.

Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world in September 2017 (previous month):

• Submitted a pull request to Quadrapassel (the Gnome version of Tetris) to start a new game when the pause button is pressed outside of a game. This means you would no longer have to use the mouse to start a new game. [...]
• Made a large number of improvements to AptFS my FUSE-based filesystem that provides a view on unpacked Debian source packages as regular folders including moving away from manual parsing of package lists [...] and numerous code tidying/refactoring changes.
• Sent a small patch to django-sitetree, a Django library for menu and breadcrumb navigation elements to not mask test exit codes from the surrounding shell. [...]
• Updated travis.debian.net, my hosted service for projects that host their Debian packaging on GitHub to use the Travis CI continuous integration platform to test builds:
  • Add support for "sloppy" backports. Thanks to Bernd Zeimetz for the idea and ongoing testing. [...]
  • Merged a pull request from James McCoy to pass DEB_BUILD_PROFILES through to the build. [...]
  • Workaround Travis CI's HTTP proxy which does not appear to support SRV records. [...]
  • Run debc from devscripts if the build was successful [...] and output the .buildinfo file if it exists [...].
• Fixed a few issues in local-debian-mirror, my package to easily maintain and customise a local Debian mirror via the DebConf configuration tool:
  • Fix an issue where file permissions from the remote could result in a local archive that was impossible to access. [...]
  • Clear out empty directories on the local repository. [...]
• Updated django-staticfiles-dotd, my Django staticfiles adaptor to concatentate static media in .d-style directories to support Python 3.x by using bytes objects (commit) and move away from monkeypatch as it does not have a Python 3.x port yet (commit).
• I also posted a short essay to my blog entitled "Ask the Dumb Questions" as well as provided an update on the latest Lintian release.

---

Lintian is a static analysis tool for Debian packages, reporting on various errors, omissions and general quality-assurance issues to maintainers. I've previously written about my exploits with Lintian as well as authoring a short tutorial on how to write your own Lintian check. Anyway, I recently uploaded version 2.5.53 about two months since previous release. The biggest changes you may notice are supporting the latest version of the Debian Policy as well the addition of checks to encourage the migration to Python 3. Thanks to all who contributed patches, code review and bug reports to this release. The full changelog is as follows:

lintian (2.5.53) unstable; urgency=medium
  The "we are all Perl developers now" release.
  * Summary of tag changes:
    + Added:
      - alternatively-build-depends-on-python-sphinx-and-python3-sphinx
      - build-depends-on-python-sphinx-only
      - dependency-on-python-version-marked-for-end-of-life
      - maintainer-script-interpreter
      - missing-call-to-dpkg-maintscript-helper
      - node-package-install-in-nodejs-rootdir
      - override-file-in-wrong-package
      - package-installs-java-bytecode
      - python-foo-but-no-python3-foo
      - script-needs-depends-on-sensible-utils
      - script-uses-deprecated-nodejs-location
      - transitional-package-should-be-oldlibs-optional
      - unnecessary-testsuite-autopkgtest-header
      - vcs-browser-links-to-empty-view
    + Removed:
      - debug-package-should-be-priority-extra
      - missing-classpath
      - transitional-package-should-be-oldlibs-extra
  * checks/apache2.pm:
    + [CL] Fix an apache2-unparsable-dependency false positive by allowing
      periods (".") in dependency names.  (Closes: #873701)
  * checks/binaries.pm:
    + [CL] Apply patches from Guillem Jover & Boud Roukema to improve the
      description of the binary-file-built-without-LFS-support tag.
      (Closes: #874078)
  * checks/changes. pm,desc :
    + [CL] Ignore DFSG-repacked packages when checking for upstream
      source tarball signatures as they will never match by definition.
      (Closes: #871957)
    + [CL] Downgrade severity of orig-tarball-missing-upstream-signature
      from "E:" to "W:" as many common tools do not make including the
      signatures easy enough right now.  (Closes: #870722, #870069)
    + [CL] Expand the explanation of the
      orig-tarball-missing-upstream-signature tag to include the location
      of where dpkg-source will look. Thanks to Theodore Ts'o for the
      suggestion.
  * checks/copyright-file.pm:
    + [CL] Address a number of issues in copyright-year-in-future:
      - Prevent false positives in port numbers, email addresses, ISO
        standard numbers and matching specific and general street
        addresses.  (Closes: #869788)
      - Match all violating years in a line, not just the first (eg.
        "2000-2107").
      - Ignore meta copyright statements such as "Original Author". Thanks
        to Thorsten Alteholz for the bug report.  (Closes: #873323)
      - Expand testsuite.
  * checks/cruft. pm,desc :
    + [CL] Downgrade severity of file-contains-fixme-placeholder
      tag from "important" (ie. "E:") to "wishlist" (ie. "I:").
      Thanks to Gregor Herrmann for the suggestion.
    + [CL] Apply patch from Alex Muntada (alexm) to use "substr" instead
      of "substring" in mentions-deprecated-usr-lib-perl5-directory's
      description.  (Closes: #871767)
    + [CL] Don't check copyright_hints file for FIXME placeholders.
      (Closes: #872843)
    + [CL] Don't match quoted "FIXME" variants as they are almost always
      deliberate. Thanks to Adrian Bunk for the report.  (Closes: #870199)
    + [CL] Avoid false positives in missing source checks for "CSS Browser
      Selector".  (Closes: #874381)
  * checks/debhelper.pm:
    + [CL] Prevent a false positive of
      missing-build-dependency-for-dh_-command that can be exposed by
      following the advice for the recently added
      useless-autoreconf-build-depends tag.  (Closes: #869541)
  * checks/debian-readme. pm,desc :
    + [CL] Ensure readme-debian-contains-debmake-template also checks
      for templates "Automatically generated by debmake".
  * checks/description. desc,pm :
    + [CL] Clarify explanation of description-starts-with-leading-spaces
      tag. Thanks to Taylor Kline  for the report
      and patch.  (Closes: #849622)
    + [NT] Skip capitalization-error-in-description-synopsis for
      auto-generated packages (such as dbgsym packages).
  * checks/fields. desc,pm :
    + [CL] Ensure that python3-foo packages have "Section: python", not
      just python2-foo.  (Closes: #870272)
    + [RG] Do no longer require debug packages to be priority extra.
    + [BR] Use Lintian::Data for name/section mapping
    + [CL] Check for packages including "?rev=0&sc=0" in Vcs-Browser.
      (Closes: #681713)
    + [NT] Transitional packages should now be "oldlibs/optional" rather
      than "oldlibs/extra".  The related tag has been renamed accordingly.
  * checks/filename-length.pm:
    + [NT] Skip the check on auto-generated binary packages (such as
      dbgsym packages).
  * checks/files. pm,desc :
    + [BR] Avoid privacy-breach-generic false positives for legal.xml.
    + [BR] Detect install of node package under /usr/lib/nodejs/[^/]*$
    + [CL] Check for packages shipping compiled Java class files. Thanks
      Carn  Draug .  (Closes: #873211)
    + [BR] Privacy breach is no longer experimental.
  * checks/init.d.desc:
    + [RG] Do not recommend a versioned dependency on lsb-base in
      init.d-script-needs-depends-on-lsb-base.  (Closes: #847144)
  * checks/java.pm:
    + [CL] Additionally consider .cljc files as code to avoid false-
      positive codeless-jar warnings.  (Closes: #870649)
    + [CL] Drop problematic missing-classpath check.  (Closes: #857123)
  * checks/menu-format.desc:
    + [CL] Prevent false positives in desktop-entry-lacks-keywords-entry
      for "Link" and "Directory" .desktop files.  (Closes: #873702)
  * checks/python. pm,desc :
    + [CL] Split out Python checks from "scripts" check to a new, source
      check of type "source".
    + [CL] Check for python-foo without corresponding python3-foo packages
      to assist in Python 2.x deprecation.  (Closes: #870681)
    + [CL] Check for packages that Build-Depend on python-sphinx only.
      (Closes: #870730)
    + [CL] Check for packages that alternatively Build-Depend on the
      Python 2 and Python 3 versions of Sphinx.  (Closes: #870758)
    + [CL] Check for binary packages that depend on Python 2.x.
      (Closes: #870822)
  * checks/scripts.pm:
    + [CL] Correct false positives in
      unconditional-use-of-dpkg-statoverride by detecting "if !" as a
      valid shell prefix.  (Closes: #869587)
    + [CL] Check for missing calls to dpkg-maintscript-helper(1) in
      maintainer scripts.  (Closes: #872042)
    + [CL] Check for packages using sensible-utils without declaring a
      dependency after its split from debianutils.  (Closes: #872611)
    + [CL] Warn about scripts using "nodejs" as an interpreter now that
      nodejs provides /usr/bin/node.  (Closes: #873096)
    + [BR] Add a statistic tag giving interpreter.
  * checks/testsuite. desc,pm :
    + [CL] Remove recommendations to add a "Testsuite: autopkgtest" field
      to debian/control as it is added when needed by dpkg-source(1)
      since dpkg 1.17.1.  (Closes: #865531)
    + [CL] Warn if we see an unnecessary "Testsuite: autopkgtest" header
      in debian/control.
    + [NT] Recognise "autopkgtest-pkg-go" as a valid test suite.
    + [CL] Recognise "autopkgtest-pkg-elpa" as a valid test suite.
      (Closes: #873458)
    + [CL] Recognise "autopkgtest-pkg-octave" as a valid test suite.
      (Closes: #875985)
    + [CL] Update the description of unknown-testsuite to reflect that
      "autopkgtest" is not the only valid value; the referenced URL
      is out-of-date (filed as #876008).  (Closes: #876003)
  * data/binaries/embedded-libs:
    + [RG] Detect embedded copies of heimdal, libgxps, libquicktime,
      libsass, libytnef, and taglib.
    + [RG] Use an additional string to detect embedded copies of
      openjpeg2.  (Closes: #762956)
  * data/fields/name_section_mappings:
    + [BR] node- package section is javascript.
    + [CL] Apply patch from Guillem Jover to add more section mappings.
      (Closes: #874121)
  * data/fields/obsolete-packages:
    + [MR] Add dh-systemd.  (Closes: #872076)
  * data/fields/perl-provides:
    + [CL] Refresh perl provides.
  * data/fields/virtual-packages:
    + [CL] Update data file from archive. This fixes a false positive for
      "bacula-director".  (Closes: #835120)
  * data/files/obsolete-paths:
    + [CL] Add note to /etc/bash_completion.d entry regarding stricter
      filename requirements.  (Closes: #814599)
  * data/files/privacy-breaker-websites:
    + [BR] Detect custom donation logos like apache.
    + [BR] Detect generic counter website.
  * data/standards-version/release-dates:
    + [CL] Add 4.0.1 and 4.1.0 as known standards versions.
      (Closes: #875509)
  * debian/control:
    + [CL] Mention Debian Policy v4.1.0 in the description.
    + [CL] Add myself to Uploaders.
    + [CL] Drop unnecessary "Testsuite: autopkgtest"; this is implied from
      debian/tests/control existing.
  * commands/info.pm:
    + [CL] Add a --list-tags option to print all tags Lintian knows about.
      Thanks to Rajendra Gokhale for the suggestion.  (Closes: #779675)
  * commands/lintian.pm:
    + [CL] Apply patch from Maia Everett to avoid British spelling when
      using en_US locale.  (Closes: #868897)
  * lib/Lintian/Check.pm:
    + [CL] Stop emitting  maintainer,uploader -address-causes-mail-loops
      for @packages.debian.org addresses.  (Closes: #871575)
  * lib/Lintian/Collect/Binary.pm:
    + [NT] Introduce an "auto-generated" argument for "is_pkg_class".
  * lib/Lintian/Data.pm:
    + [CL] Modify Lintian::Data's "all" to always return keys in insertion
      order, dropping dependency on libtie-ixhash-perl.
  * helpers/coll/objdump-info-helper:
    + [CL] Apply patch from Steve Langasek to accommodate binutils 2.29
      outputting symbols in a different format on ppc64el.
      (Closes: #869750)
  * t/tests/fields-perl-provides/tags:
    + [CL] Update expected output to match new Perl provides.
  * t/tests/files-privacybreach/*:
    + [CL] Add explicit test for packages including external fonts via
      the Google Font API. Thanks to Ian Jackson for the report.
      (Closes: #873434)
    + [CL] Add explicit test for packages including external fonts via
      the Typekit API via <script/> HTML tags.
  * t/tests/*/desc:
    + [CL] Add missing entries in "Test-For" fields to make
      development/testing workflow less error-prone.
  * private/generate-tag-summary:
    + [CL] git-describe(1) will usually emit 7 hexadecimal digits as the
      abbreviated object name,  However, as this can be user-dependent,
      pass --abbrev=0 to ensure it does not vary between systems.  This
      also means we do not need to strip it ourselves.
  * private/refresh-*:
    + [CL] Use deb.debian.org as the default mirror.
    + [CL] Update locations of Contents-<arch> files; they are now
      namespaced by distribution (eg. "main").
 -- Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>  Wed, 20 Sep 2017 09:25:06 +0100

This probably won't mean much to people outside the UK, I'm guessing. Sorry! :-) The Crystal Maze was an awesome fun game show on TV in the UK in the 1990s. Teams would travel through differently-themed zones, taking on challenges to earn crystals for later rewards in the Crystal Dome. I really enojyed it, as did just about everybody my age that I know of... A group have started up a new Crystal Maze attraction in London and Manchester, giving some of us a chance of indulging our nostalgia directly in a replica of the show's setup! Neil NcGovern booked a load of tickets and arranged for a large group of people to go along this weekend. It was amazing! (Sorry!) I ended up captaining one of the 4 teams, and our team ("Failure is always an option!") scored highest in the final game - catching bits of gold foil flying around in the Dome. It was really, really fun and I'd heartily recommend it to other folks who like action games and puzzle solving. I just missed the biting scorn of the original show presenter, Richard O'Brien, but our "Maze Master" Boudica was great fun and got us all pumped up and working together.

This probably won't mean much to people outside the UK, I'm guessing. Sorry! :-) The Crystal Maze was an awesome fun game show on TV in the UK in the 1990s. Teams would travel through differently-themed zones, taking on challenges to earn crystals for later rewards in the Crystal Dome. I really enojyed it, as did just about everybody my age that I know of... A group have started up a new Crystal Maze attraction in London and Manchester, giving some of us a chance of indulging our nostalgia directly in a replica of the show's setup! Neil NcGovern booked a load of tickets and arranged for a large group of people to go along this weekend. It was amazing! (Sorry!) I ended up captaining one of the 4 teams, and our team ("Failure is always an option!") scored highest in the final game - catching bits of gold foil flying around in the Dome. It was really, really fun and I'd heartily recommend it to other folks who like action games and puzzle solving. I just missed the biting scorn of the original show presenter, Richard O'Brien, but our "Maze Master" Boudica was great fun and got us all pumped up and working together.

DebConf16 Firstly, thanks to everyone who came out and added their own uniqueness and expertise to the pool. The feedback received so far has been very positive and I feel that the few problems we did experience was dealt with very efficiently. Having a DebConf in your hometown is a great experience, consider a bid for hosting a DebConf in your city! DebConf16 Open Festival (5 August) The Open Festival (usually Debian Open Day) turned out pretty good. It was a collection of talks, a job fair, and some demos of what can be done with Debian. I particularly liked Hetzner s stand. I got to show off some 20 year old+ Super Mario skills and they had some fun brain teasers as well. It s really great to see a job stand that s so interactive and I think many companies can learn from them.

At #Debconf? Join the #HetznerSA #Supermariobros challenge and stand a chance to win a case of #Leagueofbeers pic.twitter.com/DpkOj6wmZb HetznerSA Careers (@HetznerCareers) July 2, 2016

The demo that probably drew the most attention was from my friend Georg who demoed some LulzBot Mini 3D Printers. They really seem to love Debian which is great!

LulzBot Mini #3Dprinters were on the scene at @DebConf Open Festival in South Africa. We re powered by @debian! pic.twitter.com/AOBS64ZtiJ LulzBot (@lulzbot3D) July 13, 2016

DebConf (6 August to 12 August) If I try to write up all my thoughts and feeling about DC16, I ll never get this post finished. Instead, here as some tweets from DebConf that other have written:

@o0karen0o delivering today s #DebConf16 keynote pic.twitter.com/hG1wD5MBhH Michael Banck (@mbanck) July 3, 2016

Great to see Sicelo Mhlongo speaking about issues using @debian in Swaziland #debconf16 pic.twitter.com/U6z7HA8zd5 Neil McGovern (@nmcgovern) July 7, 2016

What happened at #DebConf16 yesterday? Sandstorm Principles talking about the freedom to choose #software #sandbox pic.twitter.com/ltYaw3dAmP Obsidian Systems (@obsidianza) July 5, 2016

All @DebConf end with similar feelings: we re an incredible crowd working together for a incredibly important cause. https://t.co/DYuUWT5eKt Didier Raboud (@OdyX_) July 9, 2016

My congratulations to the #DebConf video team. As usual, they are doing an amazing work at #DebConf16
Marcelo Santana (@mgsantana) July 8, 2016

Day Trip We had 3 day trips:

• Trip out to sea point and penguin spotting (Dominic Hargreaves has some beautiful photos up on Flickr)
• Hike up Table Mountaing to Kirstenbosch gardens
• Safari tour (I went on this one and you can see some of my photos on Gallery)

Brought to you by See you in Montr al! DebConf17 dates:

• DebCamp: 31 July to 4 August 2017
• DebConf: 6 August to 12 August 2017
• More details on the DebConf Wiki.

The DC17 sponsorship brochure contains a good deal of information, please share it with anyone who might be interested in sponsoring DebConf! Media

• Official (and some unofficial) photos are on the DebConf gallery site (you can add yours, too)
• All official DebConf videos can be found on the video meeting archives

The survey was run in my LimeSurvey instance, surveys.larjona.net. LimeSurvey its a nice free software with a lot of features. It provides a Ranking question type, and it was very easy for allowing people to vote in the Debian style (Debian uses the Condorcet method in its elections).

sort results_stretch2.csv   uniq -c > results_stretch3.csv

./voteengine.py <stretch.txt  > winner.txt

Filed under: Tools Tagged: data mining, Debian, English, SaaS, statistics

At DebConf 16 I was working on a systemd backport for Debian/jessie. Results are officially available via the Debian archive now. In Debian jessie we have systemd v215 (which originally dates back to 2014-07-03 upstream-wise, plus changes + fixes from pkg-systemd folks of course). Now via Debian backports you have the option to update systemd to a very recent version: v230. If you have jessie-backports enabled it s just an apt install systemd -t jessie-backports away. For the upstream changes between v215 and v230 see upstream s NEWS file for list of changes. (Actually the systemd backport is available since 2016-07-19 for amd64, arm64 + armhf, though for mips, mipsel, powerpc, ppc64el + s390x we had to fight against GCC ICEs when compiling on/for Debian/jessie and for i386 architecture the systemd test-suite identified broken O_TMPFILE permission handling.) Thanks to the Alexander Wirt from the backports team for accepting my backport, thanks to intrigeri for the related apparmor backport, Guus Sliepen for the related ifupdown backport and Didier Raboud for the related usb-modeswitch/usb-modeswitch-data backports. Thanks to everyone testing my systemd backport and reporting feedback. Thanks a lot to Felipe Sateler and Martin Pitt for reviews, feedback and cooperation. And special thanks to Michael Biebl for all his feedback, reviews and help with the systemd backport from its very beginnings until the latest upload. PS: I cannot stress this enough how fantastic Debian s pkg-systemd team is. Responsive, friendly, helpful, dedicated and skilled folks, thanks folks!

What happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between June 12th and June 18th 2016: Media coverage

• Sune Vuorela blogged about making Qt documentation reproducible while spending good times in the Alps.

GSoC and Outreachy updates Weekly reports by our participants:

• Scarlett Clark
• Satyam Zode

Toolchain fixes

• texlive-bin/2016.20160513.41080-3 has been uploaded to unstable, featuring support for FORCE_SOURCE_DATE. See the last post for details on it.
• doxygen/1.4.4-1 has been uploaded to unstable, fixing #822197 (upstream bug), which caused some generated html file to contain unreproducible memory addresses of Python objects used at build time.
• debhelper/9.20160618 has been uploaded to unstable, fixing #824490, which instructs ant to not save the username of the build user in the generated files. Original patch by Emmanuel Bourg.
• HW42 reported a long-known (although only internally) bug in our dpkg-buildinfo. this particular bug doesn't affect our current infrastructure, but it's a blocker for having .buildinfo support merged upstream.
• epydoc/3.0.1+dfsg-13 and 3.0.1+dfsg-14 have been uploaded by Kenneth J. Pronovici which fixes nondeterministic ordering issues in generated documentation and removes memory addresses. Original patches (#825968 and #827416) by Sascha Steinbiss.

With this upload of texlive-bin we decided to stop keeping our patched fork of as most of the patches for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support had been integrated upstream already, and the last one (making FORCE_SOURCE_DATE default to 1) had been refused. So, we are now going to let the archive be rebuilt against unstable's texlive-bin and see how many packages will become unreproducible with this change; once enough data will be collected we will ponder whether FORCE_SOURCE_DATE should be exported by helper tools (such as debhelper) or manually exported by every package that needs it. (For those wondering: we still recommend to follow SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH always and don't recommend other projects to implement FORCE_SOURCE_DATE ) With the drop of texlive-bin we now have only three modified packages in our experimental repository. Reproducible work in other projects

• Ed Maste sent a patch to have ELF Tool Chain's elfcopy support SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.
• Ed Maste changed FreeBSD's ar(1) to have a reproducible output by default when invoked with -s.
• Ed Maste merged changes from NetBSD's makefs to FreeBSD's to add a command line option for setting the timestamp.
• Ed Maste reported on FreeBSD package reproducibility details from the investigation for his BSDCan talk, including diffoscope results for the non-reproducible packages.
• Holger Levsen spent some time thinking and documenting how to store package notes and issues in a multi-distribution friendly manner, so that we can share these issues and notes between reproducible efforts across different projects. Thoughts we had about this topic during the Athens meeting last December are included in the updated README.

Packages fixed The following 12 packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: django-floppyforms flask-restful hy jets3t kombu llvm-toolchain-3.8 moap python-bottle python-debtcollector python-django-debug-toolbar python-osprofiler stevedore The following packages have become reproducible after being fixed:

• adios/1.9.0-10 by Alastair McKinstry.
• airstrike/0.99+1.0pre6a-8 by Markus Koschany, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• apt-dater/1.0.3-1 by Patrick Matth i, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• bitlbee/3.4.2-1 by Jelmer Vernoo .
• dar/2.5.5-1 by Laszlo Boszormenyi.
• fastjet/3.0.6+dfsg-2 by Mattia Rizzolo, original patch by Maria Valentina Marin.
• libretro-beetle-pce-fast/0.9.38.7+git20160609-1 by S rgio Benjamim, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• libretro-beetle-psx/0.9.38.6+git20151019-2 by S rgio Benjamim, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• mx/1.99.4-1 by Ying-Chun Liu.
• python-coverage/4.1+dfsg.1-1 by Ben Finney.
• shiro/1.2.5-1 by Tony Mancill, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• splix/2.0.0+svn315-5 by Didier Raboud.
• u-boot/2016.07~rc1+dfsg1-3 by Vagrant Cascadian, debugging and patch by HW42, patches submitted upstream.

Some uploads have fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• gcc-mingw-w64/18 by Stephen Kitt.
• gnuplot/5.0.3+dfsg3-6 by Anton Gladky, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.

Uploads with reproducibility fixes that currently fail to build:

• ruby2.3/2.3.1-3 by Christian Hofstaedtler, avoids unreproducible rbconfig.rb files by always using bash for building.

Patches submitted that have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #827109 against asciijump by Reiner Herrmann: sort source files for deterministic linking order.
• #827112 against boswars by Reiner Herrmann: sort source files for deterministic linking order.
• #827114 against overgod by Reiner Herrmann: use C locale for sorting source files.
• #827115 against netpbm by Alexis Bienven e: honour SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH while generating output.
• #827124 against funguloids by Reiner Herrmann: use C locale for sorting files.
• #827145 against scummvm by Reiner Herrmann: don't embed extra fields in zip archive and build with proper host architecture.
• #827150 against netpanzer by Reiner Herrmann: sort source files for deterministic linking order.
• #827172 against reaver by Alexis Bienven e: sort object files for deterministic linking order.
• #827187 against latex2html by Alexis Bienven e: iterate deterministic over Perl hashes; honour SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH for output; strip username from output; sort index keys.
• #827313 against cherrypy3 by Sascha Steinbiss: prevent memory addresses in output.
• #827361 against matplotlib by Alexis Bienven e: honour SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH in output and sort keys while iterating over dict.
• #827382 against dwarfutils by Reiner Herrmann: fix array size, which caused memory from outside a table to be embedded into output.
• #827384 against skytools3 by Sascha Steinbiss: use stable sorting order and remove timestamps from documentation.
• #827419 against ldaptor by Sascha Steinbiss: sort list of input files and prevent home directory from leaking into documentation.
• #827546 against git-buildpackage by Sascha Steinbiss: replace timestamps in documentation with changelog date; prevent temporary paths in documentation.
• #827572 against xprobe by Reiner Herrmann: sort list of object files in static library archives.

Package reviews 36 reviews have been added, 12 have been updated and 31 have been removed in this week. 17 FTBFS bugs have been reported by Chris Lamb, Santiago Vila and Dominic Hargreaves. diffoscope development Satyam worked on argument completion (#826711) for diffoscope. strip-nondeterminism development Mattia Rizzolo uploaded strip-nondeterminism 0.019-1~bpo8+1 to jessie-backports. reprotest development Ceridwen filed an Intent To Package (ITP) bug for reprotest as #827293. tests.reproducible-builds.org

• Mattia Rizzolo uploaded pbuilder 0.225 to unstable, providing built-in support for eatmydata. We're planning to use it in armhf and i386 builders where we don't build in tmpfs, to increase the build speed some more.
• Valery Young reworked the appearance of the package page, hopefully making them more intuitive and usable. In the process she changed the script generating them to use a real templating system, thus improving maintenance for the future.
• Holger adjusted the scheduler to reschedule packages in state 'depwait' after two days instead of three.
• Mattia added the bug title next to the bug numbers in the notes.

Misc. This week's edition was written by Mattia Rizzolo, Reiner Herrmann, Ed Maste and Holger Levsen and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible builds folks on IRC.

What happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between June 5th and June 11th 2016: Media coverage Ed Maste gave a talk at BSDCan 2016 on reproducible builds (slides, video). GSoC and Outreachy updates Weekly reports by our participants:

• Scarlett Clark worked on making some packages reproducible, focusing on KDE backend and utility programs.
• Ceridwen published an initial design for the interface for reprotest, including a discussion on different types of build variations and the difficulties of specifying certain types of variations.
• Valerie Young improved documentation for building our tests website, began migrating Debian-specific pages into a new namespace, and planned future work around its navigation.

Documentation update - Ximin Luo proposed a modification to our SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH spec explaining FORCE_SOURCE_DATE. Some upstream build tools (e.g. TeX, see below) have expressed a desire to control which cases of embedded timestamps should obey SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. They were not convinced by our arguments on why this is a bad idea, so we agreed on an environment variable FORCE_SOURCE_DATE for them to implement their desired behaviour - named generically, so that at least we can set it centrally. For more details, see the text just linked. However, we strongly urge most build tools not to use this, and instead obey SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH unconditionally in all cases. Toolchain fixes

• TeX Live 2016 released with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support for all engines except LuaTeX and original TeX.
• Continued discussion (alternative archive) with TeX upstream, about SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH corner cases, eventually resulting in the FORCE_SOURCE_DATE proposal from above.
• gcc-5/5.4.0-4 by Matthias Klose now avoids storing -fdebug-prefix-map in DW_AT_producer, thanks to original patch by Daniel Kahn Gillmor.
• sphinx/1.4.3-1 by Dmitry Shachnev now drops Debian-specific patches relating to SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH applied upstream, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• asciidoctor/1.5.4-2 by C dric Boutillier now supports SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, thanks to original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• dh-python/1.5.4-2 by Piotr O arowski now behaves better in some cases, thanks to original patch by Chris Lamb.

Packages fixed The following 16 packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build-dependencies: apertium-dan-nor apertium-swe-nor asterisk-prompt-fr-armelle blktrace canl-c code-saturne coinor-symphony dsc-statistics frobby libphp-jpgraph paje.app proxycheck pybit spip tircd xbs The following 5 packages are new in Debian and appear to be reproducible so far: golang-github-bowery-prompt golang-github-pkg-errors golang-gopkg-dancannon-gorethink.v2 libtask-kensho-perl sspace The following packages had older versions which were reproducible, and their latest versions are now reproducible again after being fixed:

• excellent-bifurcation/0.0.20071015-8 by Vincent Cheng, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• gnurobbo/0.68+dfsg-2 by Stephen Kitt, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.

The following packages have become reproducible after being fixed:

• gdbm/1.8.3-14 by Matthias Klose, original patch by J r my Bobbio.
• miceamaze/4.2.1-3 by Sarah COUDERT, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• netcdf/1:4.4.1~rc2-1~exp3 by Bas Couwenberg.
• osmo-bts/0.4.0-2 by Ruben Undheim.
• pd-hcs/0.1-3 by IOhannes m zm lnig.
• pd-hid/0.7-2 by IOhannes m zm lnig.
• python-certbot/0.8.0-1 by Harlan Lieberman-Berg, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• python-csb/1.2.3+dfsg-3 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• python-osprofiler/1.3.0-2 by Thomas Goirand.
• usb-modeswitch-data/20160112-3 by Didier Raboud, original patch by intrigeri.

Some uploads have fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• bzr/2.7.0-7 by Jelmer Vernoo .
• clanlib/1.0~svn3827-5 by Stephen Kitt, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• dwarfutils/20160507+git20160523.9086738-1 by Fabian Wolff.
• fakeroot/1.20.2-2 by Clint Adams, original patch.
• fastqtl/2.184+dfsg-2 by Dylan A ssi, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• gnuplot/5.0.3+dfsg3-3 by Anton Gladky.
• lazarus/1.6+dfsg-3 by Paul Gevers.
• python-pygit2/0.24.0-3 by Ond ej Nov .

Patches submitted that have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #806331 against xz-utils by Ximin Luo: make the selected POSIX shell stable accross build environments
• #806494 against gnupg by intrigeri: Make man pages not embed a build-time dependent timestamp
• #806945 against bash by Reiner Herrmann and Ximin Luo: Use the system man2html, and set PGRP_PIPE unconditionally.
• #825857 against python-setuptools by Anton Gladky: sort libs in native_libs.txt
• #826408 against brainparty by Reiner Herrmann: Sort object files for deterministic linking order
• #826416 against blockout2 by Reiner Herrmann: Sort the list of source files
• #826418 against xgalaga++ by Reiner Herrmann: Sort source files to get a deterministic linking order
• #826423 against kraptor by Reiner Herrmann: Sort source files for deterministic linking order
• #826431 against traceroute by Reiner Herrmann: Sort lists of libraries/source/object files
• #826544 against doc-debian by intrigeri: make the created files stable regardless of the locale
• #826676 against python-openstackclient by Chris Lamb: make the build reproducible
• #826677 against cadencii by Chris Lamb: make the build reproducible
• #826760 against dctrl-tools by Reiner Herrmann: Sort object files for deterministic linking order
• #826951 against slicot by Alexis Bienven e: please make the build reproducible (fileordering)
• #826982 against hoichess by Reiner Herrmann: Sort object files for deterministic linking order

Package reviews 68 reviews have been added, 19 have been updated and 28 have been removed in this week. New and updated issues:

• cryptographic_signature
• timestamps_in_maven_version_files
• ftbfs_build-indep_not_build_on_some_archs
• timestamps_added_by_xbean_spring
• timestamps_in_maven_metadata_local_xml_files
• timestamps_in_documentation_generated_by_asciidoctor

26 FTBFS bugs have been reported by Chris Lamb, 1 by Santiago Vila and 1 by Sascha Steinbiss. diffoscope development

• Mattia Rizzolo uploaded diffoscope/54 to jessie-backports.

strip-nondeterminism development

• Mattia uploaded strip-nondeterminism/0.018-1 to jessie-backports, to support a debhelper backport.
• Andrew Ayer uploaded strip-nondeterminism/0.018-2 fixing #826700, a packaging improvement for Multi-Arch to ease cross-build situations.
• 2 days later Andrew released strip-nondeterminism/0.019; now strip-nondeterminism is able to:
  • recursively normalize JAR files embedded within JAR files (#823917)
  • clamp the timestamp, the same way tar >=1.28-2.2 can (for now available only for gzip archives)

disorderfs development

• Andrew Ayer released disorderfs/0.4.3, fixing a issue with umask handling (#826891)

tests.reproducible-builds.org

• Valerie Young namespaced the Debian-specific pages to /debian/ namespace, with redirects to for the previous URLs.
• Holger Levsen improved the reliability of build jobs: the availability of both build nodes (for a given build) is now being tested when a build job is started, to better cope when one of the 25 build nodes go down for some reason.
• Ximin Luo improved the index of identified issues to include the total popcon scores of each issue, which is now also used for sorting that page.

Misc. Steven Chamberlain submitted a patch to FreeBSD's makefs to allow reproducible builds of the kfreebsd installer. Ed Maste committed a patch to FreeBSD's binutils to enable determinstic archives by default in GNU ar. Helmut Grohne experimented with cross+native reproductions of dash with some success, using rebootstrap. This week's edition was written by Ximin Luo, Chris Lamb, Holger Levsen, Mattia Rizzolo and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible builds folks on IRC.

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between February 28th and March 5th:

Toolchain fixes

• Antonio Terceiro uploaded gem2deb/0.27 that forces generated gemspecs to use the date from debian/changelog.
• Antonio Terceiro uploaded gem2deb/0.28 that forces generated gemspecs to have their contains file lists sorted.
• Robert Luberda uploaded ispell/3.4.00-5 which make builds of hashes reproducible.
• C dric Boutillier uploaded ruby-ronn/0.7.3-4 which will make the output locale agnostic. Original patch by Chris Lamb.
• Markus Koschany uploaded spring/101.0+dfsg-1. Fixed by Alexandre Detiste.

Ximin Luo resubmitted the patch adding the --clamp-mtime option to Tar on Savannah's bug tracker. Lunar rebased our experimental dpkg on top of the current master branch. Changes in the test infrastructure are required before uploading a new version to our experimental repository. Reiner Herrmann rebased our custom texlive-bin against the latest uploaded version.

Packages fixed The following 77 packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: asciidoctor, atig, fuel-astute, jekyll, libphone-ui-shr, linkchecker, maven-plugin-testing, node-iscroll, origami-pdf, plexus-digest, pry, python-avro, python-odf, rails, ruby-actionpack-xml-parser, ruby-active-model-serializers, ruby-activerecord-session-store, ruby-api-pagination, ruby-babosa, ruby-carrierwave, ruby-classifier-reborn, ruby-compass, ruby-concurrent, ruby-configurate, ruby-crack, ruby-css-parser, ruby-cucumber-rails, ruby-delorean, ruby-encryptor, ruby-fakeweb, ruby-flexmock, ruby-fog-vsphere, ruby-gemojione, ruby-git, ruby-grack, ruby-htmlentities, ruby-jekyll-feed, ruby-json-schema, ruby-listen, ruby-markerb, ruby-mathml, ruby-mini-magick, ruby-net-telnet, ruby-omniauth-azure-oauth2, ruby-omniauth-saml, ruby-org, ruby-origin, ruby-prawn, ruby-pygments.rb, ruby-raemon, ruby-rails-deprecated-sanitizer, ruby-raindrops, ruby-rbpdf, ruby-rbvmomi, ruby-recaptcha, ruby-ref, ruby-responders, ruby-rjb, ruby-rspec-rails, ruby-rspec, ruby-rufus-scheduler, ruby-sass-rails, ruby-sass, ruby-sentry-raven, ruby-sequel-pg, ruby-sequel, ruby-settingslogic, ruby-shoulda-matchers, ruby-slack-notifier, ruby-symboltable, ruby-timers, ruby-zip, ticgit, tmuxinator, vagrant, wagon, yard. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• air-quality-sensor/0.1.4-1 uploaded by Benedikt Wildenhain, fixed upstream, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• device3dfx/2013.08.08-4 by Guillem Jover.
• fldigi/3.23.08-1 by Kamal Mostafa.
• fltk1.1/1.1.10-22 by Aaron M. Ucko.
• freeimage/3.17.0+ds1-2 by Ghislain Antony Vaillant.
• gimagereader/3.1.2+git368fa8f-2 by Philip Rinn.
• ginkgocadx/3.7.5-1 by Gert Wollny, fixed upstream.
• jadetex/3.13-17 by Norbert Preining.
• opensips/2.1.2-1 by Razvan Crainea.
• ruby-sqlite3/1.3.11-2 uploaded by C dric Boutillier, original patch by Lunar.
• runawk/1.6.0-2 uploaded by Andrew Shadura, patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• systraq/20160303-1 by Joost van Baal-Ili .

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• auto-multiple-choice/1.2.1-4 by Georges Khaznadar.
• avfs/1.0.3-1 uploaded by Michael Meskes, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• console-setup/1.138 uploaded by Anton Zinoviev, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• gromacs/5.1.2-1 by Nicholas Breen.
• mrrescue/1.02c-2 by Alexandre Detiste.
• usb-modeswitch-data/20160112-2 by Didier Raboud.

Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #816209 on elog by Reiner Herrmann: use printf instead of echo which is shell-independent.
• #816214 on python-pip by Reiner Herrmann: removes timestamp from generated Python scripts.
• #816230 on rows by Reiner Herrmann: tell grep to always treat the input as text.
• #816232 on eficas by Reiner Herrmann: use printf instead of echo which is shell-independent.

Florent Daigniere and bancfc reported that linux-grsec was currently built with GRKERNSEC_RANDSTRUCT which will prevent reproducible builds with the current packaging.

tests.reproducible-builds.org pbuilder has been updated to the last version to be able to support Build-Depends-Arch and Build-Conflicts-Arch. (Mattia Rizzolo, h01ger) New package sets have been added for Subgraph OS, which is based on Debian Stretch: packages and build dependencies. (h01ger) Two new armhf build nodes have been added (thanks Vagrant Cascadian) and integrated in our Jenkins setup with 8 new armhf builder jobs. (h01ger)

strip-nondeterminism development strip-nondeterminism version 0.016-1 was released on Sunday 28th. It will now normalize the POT-Creation-Date field in GNU Gettext .mo files. (Reiner Herrmann) Several improvements to the packages metadata have also been made. (h01ger, Ben Finney)

Package reviews 185 reviews have been removed, 91 added and 33 updated in the previous week. New issue: fileorder_in_gemspec_files_list. 43 FTBFS bugs were reported by Chris Lamb, Martin Michlmayr, and gregor herrmann.

Misc. After merging the patch from Dhiru Kholia adding support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH in rpm, Florian Festi opened a discussion on the rpm-ecosystem mailing list about reproducible builds. On March 4th, Lunar gave an overview of the general reproducible builds effort at the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia.

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between February 21th and February 27th:

Toolchain fixes Didier Raboud uploaded pyppd/1.0.2-4 which makes PPD generation deterministic. Emmanuel Bourg uploaded plexus-maven-plugin/1.3.8-10 which sorts the components in the components.xml files generated by the plugin. Guillem Jover has implemented stable ordering for members of the control archives in .debs. Chris Lamb submitted another patch to improve reproducibility of files generated by cython.

Packages fixed The following packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: dctrl-tools, debian-edu, dvdwizard, dymo-cups-drivers, ekg2, epson-inkjet-printer-escpr, expeyes, fades, foomatic-db, galternatives, gnuradio, gpodder, gutenprint icewm, invesalius, jodconverter-cli latex-mk, libiio, libimobiledevice, libmcrypt, libopendbx, lives, lttnganalyses, m2300w, microdc2, navit, po4a, ptouch-driver, pxljr, tasksel, tilda, vdr-plugin-infosatepg, xaos. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• afterstep/2.2.12-7 by Robert Luberda.
• arachne-pnr/0~20150927gitefdb026-2 uploaded by Ruben Undheim, patch by Dhole.
• astroquery/0.3.1+dfsg-2 by Vincent Prat.
• compton-conf/0.1.0+20151226-2 uploaded by Alf Gaida, original patch by Dhole.
• disque/1.0~rc1-5 uploaded by Chris Lamb, issue identified by Reiner Herrmann.
• foo2zjs/20151024dfsg0-2 by Didier Raboud.
• gnugo/3.8-9 uploaded by Martin A. Godisch, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• hplip/3.16.2+repack0-4 by Didier Raboud.
• ibus-braille/0.1.2.99+git1.a95477d-4 by Samuel Thibault.
• iputils/3:20150815-1 by Noah Meyerhans, original patch by Juan Picca.
• jimtcl/0.76-2 by Didier Raboud.
• jodconverter/2.2.2-8 uploaded by Samuel Thibault, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• jts/1.14+ds-1~exp1 by Bas Couwenberg.
• loadlin/1.6f-5 by Samuel Thibault.
• lximage-qt/0.4.0+20160108-3 by ChangZhuo Chen ( ), patch by Dhole.
• modello/1.8.3-2 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• obconf-qt/0.9.0+20151227-2 uploaded by Alf Gaida, original patch by Dhole.
• pcmanfm-qt/0.10.1-2 uploaded by Alf Gaida, original patch by Dhole.
• pnm2ppa/1.13-7 by Didier Raboud.
• screengrab/1.95+20160128-2 uploaded by Alf Gaida, original patch by Dhole.
• sip4/4.17+dfsg-2 uploaded by Scott Kitterman, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• spades/3.7.0+dfsg-1 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• sphinxtrain/1.0.8+5prealpha-4 by Samuel Thibault.
• tcsh/6.18.01-5 uploaded by Thomas Lange, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• ubertooth/2015.09.R2-4 by Ruben Undheim.
• watchdog/5.15-1 by Michael Meskes.
• xfonts-a12k12/1-12 uploaded by Nobuhiro Iwamatsu, original patch by Chris Lamb.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• gridsite/2.2.6-2 by Mattias Ellert.
• gsoap/2.8.28-2 by Mattias Ellert.
• natbraille/2.0rc3-3 by Samuel Thibault.
• pairs/4:15.04.3-1 uploaded by Maximiliano Curia, original patch by Scarlett Clark.

tests.reproducible-builds.org The reproducibly tests for Debian now vary the provider of /bin/sh between bash and dash. (Reiner Herrmann)

diffoscope development diffoscope version 50 was released on February 27th. It adds a new comparator for PostScript files, makes the directory tests pass on slower hardware, and line ordering variations in .deb md5sums files will not be hidden anymore. Version 51 uploaded the next day re-added test data missing from the previous tarball. diffoscope is looking for a new primary maintainer.

Package reviews 87 reviews have been removed, 61 added and 43 updated in the previous week. New issues: captures_shell_variable_in_autofoo_script, varying_ordering_in_data_tar_gz_or_control_tar_gz. 30 new FTBFS have been reported by Chris Lamb, Antonio Terceiro, Aaron M. Ucko, Michael Tautschnig, and Tobias Frost.

Misc. The release team reported on their discussion about the topic of rebuilding all of Stretch to make it self-contained (in respect to reproducibility). Christian Boltz is hoping someone could talk about reproducible builds at the openSUSE conference happening June 22nd-26th in N rnberg, Germany.

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between February 14th and February 20th 2016:

Toolchain fixes Yaroslav Halchenko uploaded cython/0.23.4+git4-g7eed8d8-1 which makes its output deterministic. Original patch by Chris Lamb. Didier Raboud uploaded pyppd/1.0.2-3 to experimental which now serialize PPD deterministically. Lunar submitted two patches for lcms to add a way for clients to set the creation date/time in profile headers and initialize all bytes when writing named colors.

Packages fixed The following packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: dbconfig-common, dctrl-tools, dvdwizard, ekg2, expeyes, galternatives, gpodder, icewm, latex-mk, libiio, lives, navit, po4a, tasksel, tilda, vdr-plugin-infosatepg, xaos. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• calendarserver/7.0+dfsg-1 uploaded by Rahul Amaram, issue fixed upstream, obsolete patch by Esa Peuha.
• charybdis/3.5.0-1 uploaded by Antoine Beaupr , fixed upstream.
• cpio/2.11+dfsg-5 uploaded by Anibal Monsalve Salazar, patch by Lunar.
• fdroidserver/0.6.0-1 uploaded by Hans-Christoph Steiner, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• filter/2.6.3+ds1-2 by Axel Beckert.
• foxyproxy/4.5.5-debian-1 uploaded by David Pr vot, patch by Dhole.
• fpga-icestorm/0~20151006git103e6fd-3 by Ruben Undheim.
• gutenprint/5.2.11~pre1-1 uploaded by Didier Raboud, fixed upstream.
• juce/4.1.0+repack-2 by IOhannes m zm lnig.
• libjxp-java/1.6.1-6 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• libpgm/5.2.122~dfsg-2 uploaded by Laszlo Boszormenyi, patch by Lunar.
• modello/1.8.3-2 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• python-hypothesis/3.0.2-1 by Tristan Seligmann, fixed upstream.
• tcsh/6.18.01-4 uploaded by Thomas Lange, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• astroquery/0.3.1+dfsg-1 uploaded by Vincent Prat, original patch by Juan Picca.
• vtk-dicom/0.7.4-1 by Gert Wollny.

Unknown status:

• tomcat7/7.0.68-1 by Emmanuel Bourg (test suite fails in test environment).

Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #814840 on tor by Petter Reinholdtsen: use the UTC timezone when calling asciidoc.
• #815082 on arachne-pnr by Dhole: use the C locale to format the changelog date.
• #815192 on manpages-de by Reiner Herrmann: tell grep to always treat the input as text so that it works with non-UTF-8 locales.
• #815193 on razorqt by Reiner Herrmann: tell grep to always treat the input as text so that it works with non-UTF-8 locales.
• #815250 on jacal by Reiner Herrmann: use the C locale to format the build date.
• #815252 on colord by Lunar: remove extra timestamps when generating CMF and spectra and implement support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.

reproducible.debian.net Two new package sets have been added: freedombox and freedombox_build-depends. (h01ger)

diffoscope development diffoscope version 49 was released on February 17th. It continues to improve handling of debug symbols for ELF files. Their content will now be compared separately to make them more readable. The search for matching debug packages is more efficient by looking only for .deb files in the same parent directory. Alongside more bug fixes, support for ICC profiles has been added, and libarchive is now also used to read metadata for ar archives.

strip-nondeterminism development Reiner Herrmann added support to normalize Gettext .mo files.

Package reviews 170 reviews have been removed, 172 added and 54 updated in the previous week. 34 new FTBFS bugs have been opened by Chris Lamb, h01ger and Reiner Herrmann. New issues added this week: lxqt_translate_desktop_binary_file_matched_under_certain_locales, timestamps_in_manpages_generated_by_autogen. Improvements to the prebuilder script: avoid ccache, skip disorderfs hook if device nodes cannot be created, compatibility with grsec trusted path execution (Reiner Herrmann), code cleanup (Esa Peuha).

Misc. Steven Chamberlain highlighted reproducibility problems due to differences in how Linux and FreeBSD handle permissions for symlinks. Some possible ways forward have been discussed on the reproducible-builds mailing list. Bernhard M. Wiedemann reported on some reproducibility tests made on OpenSuse mentioning the growing support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. If you are eligible for Outreachy or Google Summer of Code, consider spending the summer working on reproducible builds!

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between January 10th and January 16th:

Toolchain fixes Benjamin Drung uploaded mozilla-devscripts/0.43 which sorts the file list in preferences files. Original patch by Reiner Herrmann. Lunar submitted an updated patch series to make timestamps in packages created by dpkg deterministic. To ensure that the mtimes in data.tar are reproducible, with the patches, dpkg-deb uses the --clamp-mtime option added in tar/1.28-1 when available. An updated package has been uploaded to the experimental repository. This removed the need for a modified debhelper as all required changes for reproducibility have been merged or are now covered by dpkg.

Packages fixed The following packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: angband-doc, bible-kjv, cgoban, gnugo, pachi, wmpuzzle, wmweather, wmwork, xfaces, xnecview, xscavenger, xtrlock, virt-top. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• dist/1:3.5-36.0001-1 uploaded by Manoj Srivastava, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• grib-api/1.14.4-4 by Alastair McKinstry.
• gui-apt-key/0.4-2.1 by Axel Beckert, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• kiki-the-nano-bot/1.0.2+dfsg1-6 by Peter De Wachter, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• ldapvi/1.7-10 by Rhonda D'Vine, original patches (#777490, #793702) by Chris Lamb and akira.
• libf2c2/20090411-3 by Barak A. Pearlmutter.
• liquidsoap/1.1.1-7.1 by Mattia Rizzolo.
• marsshooter/0.7.6-1 uploaded by Markus Koschany, fixed upstream.
• offlineimap/6.6.1+dfsg1-2 by Ilias Tsitsimpis.
• pgbouncer/1.7-1 by Christoph Berg.
• python-requests-toolbelt/0.5.1-4 by Petter Reinholdtsen.
• shorewall-core/5.0.3.1-1 uploaded by Roberto C. Sanchez, fixed upstream, obsolete patch by Chris Lamb.
• slrnface/2.1.1-7 by Rhonda D'Vine, original patches (#777425, #793722) by Chris Lamb and akira.
• tetradraw/2.0.3-9 by Rhonda D'Vine, original patches (#777426, #793727) by Chris Lamb and akira.
• xblast-tnt-images/20050106-3 by Rhonda D'Vine, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• xblast-tnt/2.10.4-4 by Rhonda D'Vine, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• xtrkcad/1:4.2.2-1 uploaded by Daniel E. Markle, fixed upstream, obsolete patch by Chris Lamb.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• apt/1.2 uploaded by Julian Andres Klode, original patch by Mattia Rizzolo.
• ecere-sdk/0.44.14-1 by Jerome St-Louis.
• epubcheck/4.0.1-2 by Eugene Zhukov.
• hplip/3.15.11+repack0-1 by Didier Raboud.
• irsim/9.7.93-1 uploaded by Roland Stigge, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• julia/0.4.3-1 uploaded by Peter Colberg, fix by Graham Inggs.
• magics++/2.26.2-1 by Alastair McKinstry.
• mailagent/1:3.1-81-1 by Manoj Srivastava.
• nasm/2.11.08-1 uploaded by Anibal Monsalve Salazar, original patch by Valentin Lorentz.
• ns3/3.22+dfsg-2 uploaded by Martin Quinson, original patch by Juan Picca.
• shotwell/0.22.0-3 by J rg Frings-F rst.

Untested changes:

• firmware-nonfree/20160110-1 by Ben Hutchings (non-free).
• nvidia-graphics-drivers-legacy-304xx/304.131-3 by Andreas Beckmann (non-free).
• nvidia-graphics-drivers-legacy-340xx/340.96-2 by Andreas Beckmann (non-free).
• nvidia-graphics-drivers/340.96-4 by Andreas Beckmann (non-free).

reproducible.debian.net Once again, Vagrant Cascadian is providing another armhf build system, allowing to run 6 more armhf builder jobs, right there. (h01ger) Stop requiring a modified debhelper and adapt to the latest dpkg experimental version by providing a predetermined identifier for the .buildinfo filename. (Mattia Rizzolo, h01ger) New X.509 certificates were set up for jenkins.debian.net and reproducible.debian.net using Let's Encrypt!. Thanks to GlobalSign for providing certificates for the last year free of charge. (h01ger)

Package reviews 131 reviews have been removed, 85 added and 32 updated in the previous week. FTBFS issues filled: 29. Thanks to Chris Lamb, Mattia Rizzolo, and Niko Tyni. New issue identified: timestamps_in_manpages_added_by_golang_cobra.

Misc. Most of the minutes from the meetings held in Athens in December 2015 are now available to the public.

What happened in the reproducible builds effort this week: Toolchain fixes

• Colin Watson uploaded groff/1.22.3-2 which implements support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.
• Colin Watson uploaded halibut/1.1-2 which implements support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.

Chris Lamb filled a bug on python-setuptools with a patch to make the generated requires.txt files reproducible. The patch has been forwarded upstream. Chris also understood why the she-bang in some Python scripts kept being undeterministic: setuptools as called by dh-python could skip re-installing the scripts if the build had been too fast (under one second). #804339 offers a patch fixing the issue by passing --force to setup.py install. #804141 reported on gettext asks for support of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH in gettextize. Santiago Vila pointed out that it doesn't felt appropriate as gettextize is supposed to be an interactive tool. The problem reported seems to be in avahi build system instead. Packages fixed The following packages became reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: celestia, dsdo, fonts-taml-tscu, fte, hkgerman, ifrench-gut, ispell-czech, maven-assembly-plugin, maven-project-info-reports-plugin, python-avro, ruby-compass, signond, thepeg, wagon2, xjdic. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• 4ti2/1.6.6+ds-1 uploaded by Jerome Benoit, fixed upstream.
• allegro4.4/2:4.4.2-7 uploaded by Andreas R nnquist, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• axel/2.5-2 by Joao Eriberto Mota Filho.
• bastet/0.43-4 by Markus Koschany.
• bbswitch/0.8-3 uploaded by Luca Boccassi, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• commons-math/2.2-5 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• fatresize/1.0.2-8 by Colin Watson, reported by Chris Lamb.
• giada/0.10.2~dfsg1-1 by IOhannes m zm lnig.
• groff/1.22.3-3 by Colin Watson.
• halibut/1.1-2 by Colin Watson.
• ivy/2.4.0-2 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• libfreemarker-java/2.3.23-2 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• libjna-java/4.2.1-1 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• lmemory/0.6c-8 by Markus Koschany.
• man-db/2.7.5-1 by Colin Watson.
• maven2-core/2.2.1-23 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• ncurses/6.0+20151024-2 by Sven Joachim, report by Esa Peuha.
• netmask/2.4.3-1 by Guilhem Moulin.
• ogre-1.9/1.9.0+dfsg1-7 uploaded by Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• praat/6.0.4-2 by Rafael Laboissiere.
• soundscaperenderer/0.4.2~dfsg-5 by IOhannes m zm lnig.
• usb-modeswitch-data/20151101-1 uploaded by Didier Raboud, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues but not all of them:

• dbconfig-common/1.8.55 by Paul Gevers.
• mondrian/1:3.11.0.1-1 by Emmanuel Bourg.

Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #803893 on goaccess by Guillaume Delacour: remove __DATE__ and __TIME__ macros.
• #803908 on starlink-pal by Chris Lamb: pass -info 0 to latex2html.

Chris Lamb closed a wrongly reopened bug against haskell-devscripts that was actually a problem in haddock. reproducible.debian.net FreeBSD tests are now run for three branches: master, stable/10, release/10.2.0. (h01ger) diffoscope development Support has been added for Free Pascal unit files (.ppc). (Paul Gevers) The homepage is now available using HTTPS, thanks to Let's Encrypt!. Work has been done to be able to publish diffoscope on the Python Package Index (also known as PyPI): the tlsh module is now optional, compatibility with python-magic has been added, and the fallback code to handle RPM has been fixed. Documentation update Reiner Herrmann, Paul Gevers, Niko Tyni, opi, and Dhole offered various fixes and wording improvements to the reproducible-builds.org. A mailing-list is now available to receive change notifications. NixOS, Guix, and Baserock are featured as projects working on reproducible builds. Package reviews 70 reviews have been removed, 74 added and 17 updated this week. Chris Lamb opened 22 new fail to build from source bugs. New issues this week: randomness_in_ocaml_provides, randomness_in_qdoc_page_id, randomness_in_python_setuptools_requires_txt, gettext_creates_ChangeLog_files_and_entries_with_current_date. Misc. h01ger and Chris Lamb presented Beyond reproducible builds at the MiniDebConf in Cambridge on November 8th. They gave an overview of where we stand and the changes in user tools, infrastructure, and development practices that we might want to see happening. Feedback on these thoughts are welcome. Slides are already available, and the video should be online soon. At the same event, a meeting happened with some members of the release team to discuss the best strategy regarding releases and reproducibility. Minutes have been posted on the Debian reproducible-builds mailing-list.

Time for a quick recap of the beginning of the Stretch release cycle as far as the Debian Installer is concerned:

• It took nearly 3 months after the Jessie release, but linux finally managed to get into shape and fit for migration to testing, which unblocked the way for an debian-installer upload.
• Trying to avoid last-minute fun, I ve updated the britney freeze hints file to put into place a block-udeb on all packages.
• Unfortunately, a recent change in systemd (implementation of Proposal v2: enable stateless persistant network interface names) found its way into testing a bit before that, so I ve had my share of last-minute fun anyway! Indeed, that resulted in installer system and installed system having different views on interface naming. Thankfully I was approached by Michael Biebl right before my final tests (and debian-installer upload) so there was little head scratching involved. Commits were already in the master branch so a little plan was proposed in Fixing udev-udeb vs. net.ifnames for Stretch Alpha 1. This was implemented in two shots, given the extra round trip due to having dropped a binary package in the meanwhile and due to dak s complaining about it.
• After the usual round of build (see logs), and dak copy-installer to get installer files from unstable to testing, and urgent to get the source into testing as well (see request), I ve asked Steve McIntyre to start building images through debian-cd. As expected, some troubles were run into, but they were swiftly fixed!
• While Didier Raboud and Steve were performing some tests with the built images, I ve prepared the annoucement for dda@, and updated the usual pages in the debian-installer corner of the website: news entry, errata, and homepage.
• Once the website was rebuilt to include these changes, I ve sent the announce, and lifted all block-udeb.

(On a related note, I ve started tweeting rather regularly about my actions, wins & fails, using the #DebianInstaller hashtag. I might try and aggregate my tweets as @CyrilBrulebois into more regular blog posts, time permitting.) Executive summary: D-I Stretch Alpha 1 is released, time to stretch a bit! (Credit: rferran on openclipart)

What happened about the reproducible builds effort for this week: Presentations On June 7th, Reiner Herrmann presented the project at the Gulaschprogrammiernacht 15 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Video and audio recordings in German are available, and so are the slides in English. Toolchain fixes

• Joachim Breitner uploaded ghc/7.8.4-9 which uses a hash of the command line instead of the pid when calculating a random directory name.
• Lunar uploaded mozilla-devscripts/0.42 which now properly sets the timezone. Patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• Dmitry Shachnev uploaded python-qt4/4.11.4+dfsg-1 which now outputs the list of imported module in a stable order. The issue has been fixed upstream. Original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• Norbert Preining uploaded tex-common/6.00 which tries to ensure reproducible builds in files generated by dh_installtex.
• Barry Warsaw uploaded wheel/0.24.0-2 which makes the output deterministic. Barry has submitted the fixes upstream based on patches by Reiner Herrman.

Daniel Kahn Gillmor's report on help2man started a discussion with Brendan O'Dea and Ximin Luo about standardizing a common environment variable that would provide a replacement for an embedded build date. After various proposals and research by Ximin about date handling in several programming languages, the best solution seems to define SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH with a value suitable for gmtime(3).

1. Martin Borgert wondered if Sphinx could be changed in a way that would avoid having to tweak debian/rules in packages using it to produce HTML documentation.

Daniel Kahn Gillmor opened a new report about icont producing unreproducible binaries. Packages fixed The following 32 packages became reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: agda, alex, c2hs, clutter-1.0, colorediffs-extension, cpphs, darcs-monitor, dispmua, haskell-curl, haskell-glfw, haskell-glib, haskell-gluraw, haskell-glut, haskell-gnutls, haskell-gsasl, haskell-hfuse, haskell-hledger-interest, haskell-hslua, haskell-hsqml, haskell-hssyck, haskell-libxml-sax, haskell-openglraw, haskell-readline, haskell-terminfo, haskell-x11, jarjar-maven-plugin, kxml2, libcgi-struct-xs-perl, libobject-id-perl, maven-docck-plugin, parboiled, pegdown. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• acorn/0.12.0-1 by Bas Couwenberg, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• cabal-debian/4.17.4-3 by Joachim Breitner.
• coin3/3.1.4~abc9f50-9 by Anton Gladky.
• deets/0.2.1-4 by Clint Adams.
• elinks/0.12~pre6-8 by Moritz Muehlenhoff.
• fiona/1.5.1-1 uploaded by Johan Van de Wauw, original patch by Juan Picca.
• gcc-mingw-w64/15.2 by Stephen Kitt.
• glance/2015.1.0-2 uploaded by Thomas Goirand, original patch by Juan Picca.
• hamlib/1.2.15.3-3 uploaded by Colin Tuckley, original patch by akira.
• ikiwiki/3.20150610 by Simon McVittie, Joey Hess and Daniel Kahn Gillmor. Cheers!
• lava-dispatcher/2015.06-1 by Neil Williams.
• libur-perl/0.430-3 by gregor herrmann, fix suggested by Niko Tyni.
• lrzsz/0.12.21-8 uploaded by Martin A. Godisch, original patch by Dhole.
• makehuman/1.0.2-9 uploaded by Muammar El Khatib, original patch by Juan Picca.
• murano/2015.1.0-4 uploaded by Thomas Goirand, original patch by Juan Picca.
• ocl-icd/2.2.7-2 by Vincent Danjean.
• oslo-config/1:1.9.3-2 uploaded by Thomas Goirand, original patch by Juan Picca.
• piuparts/0.64 by Holger Levsen.
• posh/0.12.5 by Clint Adams.
• python-glance-store/0.4.0-3 uploaded by Thomas Goirand, original patch by Juan Picca.
• python-osprofiler/0.3.0-2 uploaded by Thomas Goirand, original patch by Juan Picca.
• wheel/0.24.0-2 uploaded by Barry Warsaw, original patch by Reiner Herrman.
• xfonts-nexus/0.0.2-17 uploaded by Simon Horman, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• zec/0.12-4 by Clint Adams.
• zomg/0.8-2 by Clint Adams.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues but not all of them:

• brickos/0.9.0.dfsg-11 uploaded by Michael Tautschnig, original patch by akira.
• colobot/0.1.5-1 uploaded by Didier Raboud, original patch by akira.
• pyopencl/2015.1-1) by Tomasz Rybak.
• rockdodger/1.0.0-2 uploaded by Martin A. Godisch, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• salt/2014.7.2+ds-1) by Joe Healy.
• wmpuzzle/0.5.2-2 uploaded by Martin A. Godisch, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• wmwork/0.2.6-2 uploaded by Martin A. Godisch, original patch by Chris Lamb.

Patches submitted which did not make their way to the archive yet:

• #776618 on dactyl by Reiner Herrmann: use UTC when computing the build date.
• #787996 on cloop by Dhole: set --mtime when creating source tarball.
• #787997 on scotch by Dhole: removes extra timestamps from gzip headers.
• #787998 on perdition by Dhole: removes extra timestamps from gzip headers.
• #787999 on libwebcam by Dhole: removes extra timestamps from gzip headers.
• #788000 on libranlip by Dhole: strip extra timestamps from gzip headers, fix mtimes of packaged files.
• #788001 on libf2c2 by Dhole: fix mtimes of packages files.
• #788010 on givaro by akira: set HTML_TIMESTAMP to NO in Doxygen configuration file.
• #788012 on geis by akira: set HTML_TIMESTAMP to NO in Doxygen configuration file.
• #788122 on libfile-scan-perl by Niko Tyni: sort hash keys in Makefile.PL.
• #788238 on kfreebsd-10 by Steven Chamberlain: fix mtimes in source tarball.
• #788246 on pyepr by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788247 on grapefruit by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788249 on pastescript by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788275 on geoip-database by Reiner Herrmann: sets the embedded timestamp to the date from the latest changelog entry and normalizes the used timezone to UTC..
• #788336 on irrlicht by akira: removes $datetime from the file footer.html. Now fixed upstream..
• #788393 on brian by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788402 on linop by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788403 on pyevolve by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788406 on argvalidate by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788467 on astroquery by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788476 on mpi4py by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788477 on musicbrainzngs by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788480 on oslo.messaging by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788486 on pyopencl by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788487 on python-amqp by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788501 on python-fudge by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788504 on python-psutil by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788505 on python-pypump by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788507 on python-repoze.tm2 by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788592 on python-repoze.what by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788593 on python-scrapy by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788593 on python-scrapy by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788594 on pywavelets by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788595 on sahara by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788596 on simplejson by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788597 on waitress by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788598 on transmissionrpc by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788599 on wtforms by Juan Picca: set documentation date for Sphinx.
• #788618 on rumor by Holger Levsen: set TZ to UTC when building the documentation.
• #788722 on thuban by Reiner Herrmann: set the date embedded in man pages to the changelog date.

reproducible.debian.net A new variation to better notice when a package captures the environment has been introduced. (h01ger) The test on Debian packages works by building the package twice in a short time frame. But sometimes, a mirror push can happen between the first and the second build, resulting in a package built in a different build environment. This situation is now properly detected and will run a third build automatically. (h01ger) OpenWrt, the distribution specialized in embedded devices like small routers, is now being tested for reproducibility. The situation looks very good for their packages which seems mostly affected by timestamps in the tarball. System images will require more work on debbindiff to be better understood. (h01ger) debbindiff development Reiner Herrmann added support for decompling Java .class file and .ipk package files (used by OpenWrt). This is now available in version 22 released on 2015-06-14. Documentation update Stephen Kitt documented the new --insert-timestamp available since binutils-mingw-w64 version 6.2 available to insert a ready-made date in PE binaries built with mingw-w64. Package reviews 195 obsolete reviews have been removed, 65 added and 126 updated this week. New identified issues:

• PATH getting captured,
• UR::Namespace::Command::Update::Doc genarating documentation with timestamps.

Misc. Holger Levsen reported an issue with the locales-all package that Provides: locales but is actually missing some of the files provided by locales. Coreboot upstream has been quick to react after the announcement of the tests set up the week before. Patrick Georgi has fixed all issues in a couple of days and all Coreboot images are now reproducible (without a payload). SeaBIOS is one of the most frequently used payload on PC hardware and can now be made reproducible too. Paul Kocialkowski wrote to the mailing list asking for help on getting U-Boot tested for reproducibility. Lunar had a chat with maintainers of Open Build Service to better understand the difference between their system and what we are doing for Debian.

Debian Jessie has been released on April 25th, 2015. This has opened the Stretch development cycle. Reactions to the idea of making Debian build reproducibly have been pretty enthusiastic. As the pace is now likely to be even faster, let's see if we can keep everyone up-to-date on the developments. Before the release of Jessie The story goes back a long way but a formal announcement to the project has only been sent in February 2015. Since then, too much work has happened to make a complete report, but to give some highlights:

• New variations are now tested: umask, kernel version, domain name, and timezone. We might only be missing CPU type and current date now.
• Many improvements to the test system on jenkins.debian.net and the pages showing the results.
• Now not only packages from unstable are tested but also those in testing and experimental.
• When rescheduling packages for testing, the build products can be kept and the IRC channel gets a notification when its over.
• binutils version 2.25-6 is now built with the --enable-deterministic-archives flag. Making ar, strip and others create deterministic static libraries.
• Number of identified issues has grown from about 80 to 123 today.

Lunar did a pretty improvised lightning talk during the Mini-DebConf in Lyon. This past week It seems changes were pilling behind the curtains given the amount of activity that happened in just one week. Toolchain fixes

• Niels Thykier uploaded debhelper/9.20150501 which includes fixes to dh_makeshlibs (#774100), dh_icons (#774102), dh_usrlocal (#775020). Patches written by Lunar.
• Helmut Grohne uploaded doxygen/1.8.9.1-3 which will not generate timestamps in HTML by default. Kudos to akira for bringing the issue upstream.
• Kenneth J. Pronovici uploaded epydoc/3.0.1+dfsg-6 adding a --no-include-build-time option. Patch by Jelmer Vernooij.
• David Pr vot uploaded php-apigen/2.8.1+dfsg-2 which now has reproducible output.
• C dric Boutillier uploaded ruby-prawn/2.0.1+dfsg-1 which now produce a deterministic output when using gradients. Patch by Lunar.
• Jelmer Vernooij uploaded samba/2:4.1.17+dfsg-4 which contains a patch by Matthieu Patou making the output of pidl (from libparse-pidl-perl) reproducible.
• Dmitry Shachnev uploaded sphinx/1.3.1-1 in experimental which should produce deterministic output. The original patch from Chris Lamb has inspired the upstream fix.
• gregor herrmann uploaded libextutils-depends-perl/0.404-1 which makes ExtUtils::Depends output deterministic. Original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• Niko Tyni uploaded perl/5.20.2-4 which makes the output of Pod::Man reproducible. Nice team work visible on #780259.

We also rebased the experimental version of debhelper twice to merge the latest set of changes. Lunar submitted a patch to add a -creation-date to genisoimage. Reiner Herrmann opened #783938 to request making -notimestamp the default behavior for javadoc. Juan Picca submitted a patch to add a --use-date flag to texi2html. Packages fixed The following packages became reproducible due to changes of their build dependencies: apport, batctl, cil, commons-math3, devscripts, disruptor, ehcache, ftphs, gtk2hs-buildtools, haskell-abstract-deque, haskell-abstract-par, haskell-acid-state, haskell-adjunctions, haskell-aeson, haskell-aeson-pretty, haskell-alut, haskell-ansi-terminal, haskell-async, haskell-attoparsec, haskell-augeas, haskell-auto-update, haskell-binary-conduit, haskell-hscurses, jsch, ledgersmb, libapache2-mod-auth-mellon, libarchive-tar-wrapper-perl, libbusiness-onlinepayment-payflowpro-perl, libcapture-tiny-perl, libchi-perl, libcommons-codec-java, libconfig-model-itself-perl, libconfig-model-tester-perl, libcpan-perl-releases-perl, libcrypt-unixcrypt-perl, libdatetime-timezone-perl, libdbd-firebird-perl, libdbix-class-resultset-recursiveupdate-perl, libdbix-profile-perl, libdevel-cover-perl, libdevel-ptkdb-perl, libfile-tail-perl, libfinance-quote-perl, libformat-human-bytes-perl, libgtk2-perl, libhibernate-validator-java, libimage-exiftool-perl, libjson-perl, liblinux-prctl-perl, liblog-any-perl, libmail-imapclient-perl, libmocked-perl, libmodule-build-xsutil-perl, libmodule-extractuse-perl, libmodule-signature-perl, libmoosex-simpleconfig-perl, libmoox-handlesvia-perl, libnet-frame-layer-ipv6-perl, libnet-openssh-perl, libnumber-format-perl, libobject-id-perl, libpackage-pkg-perl, libpdf-fdf-simple-perl, libpod-webserver-perl, libpoe-component-pubsub-perl, libregexp-grammars-perl, libreply-perl, libscalar-defer-perl, libsereal-encoder-perl, libspreadsheet-read-perl, libspring-java, libsql-abstract-more-perl, libsvn-class-perl, libtemplate-plugin-gravatar-perl, libterm-progressbar-perl, libterm-shellui-perl, libtest-dir-perl, libtest-log4perl-perl, libtext-context-eitherside-perl, libtime-warp-perl, libtree-simple-perl, libwww-shorten-simple-perl, libwx-perl-processstream-perl, libxml-filter-xslt-perl, libxml-writer-string-perl, libyaml-tiny-perl, mupen64plus-core, nmap, openssl, pkg-perl-tools, quodlibet, r-cran-rjags, r-cran-rjson, r-cran-sn, r-cran-statmod, ruby-nokogiri, sezpoz, skksearch, slurm-llnl, stellarium. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• berkeley-abc/1.01+20141105hg5b5af75+dfsg-3 uploaded by Ruben Undheim, original patch by Johann Klammer.
• binutils/2.25-7 by Matthias Klose.
• bitmap-mule/8.5+0.20030825.0433-16 uploaded by Tatsuya Kinoshita, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• blobby/1.0-2 by Felix Geyer.
• codelite/7.0+dfsg-2 by James Cowgill.
• conkeror/1.0~~pre-1+git150409-1 by Axel Beckert.
• convmv/1.15-1 by Christian Perrier.
• cpl/6.6~b-1 by Ole Streicher.
• deheader/1.1-2 by Reiner Herrmann.
• dict-foldoc/20150318-1 uploaded by Iustin Pop, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• ding/1.8-1 by Roland Rosenfeld.
• doc-rfc/20150425-1 by Iustin Pop.
• doxygen/1.8.9.1-3 by Helmut Grohne.
• eureka/1.07-1 by Fabian Greffrath.
• eximdoc4/4.85-2 uploaded by Andreas Metzler, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• flashproxy/1.7-3 by Ximin Luo.
• heimdal/1.6~rc2+dfsg-10 by Jelmer Vernooij.
• init-system-helpers/1.23 by Martin Pitt original patch by Lunar.
• ldb/2:1.1.20-2 by Jelmer Vernooij.
• libalien-wxwidgets-perl/0.67+dfsg-1 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• libcairo-perl/1.105-1 by intrigeri.
• libclass-methodmaker-perl/2.24-1 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• libcommon-sense-perl/3.73-3 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• libelixirfm-perl/1.1.976-4 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• libgnome2-perl/1.045-3 by intrigeri.
• libjs-jcrop/0.9.12+dfsg-2 uploaded by David Pr vot, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• liblas/1.8.0-2 by Bas Couwenberg.
• libopengl-perl/0.6704+dfsg-1 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• libparse-recdescent-perl/1.967009+dfsg-2 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• librasterlite/1.1g-5 by Bas Couwenberg.
• libterm-size-perl-perl/0.029-2 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• libvdpau/1.1-1 by Andreas Beckmann.
• libxml-sax-expatxs-perl/1.33-2 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• lynx-cur/2.8.9dev4-2 by Axel Beckert.
• mapcache/1.2.1-3 by Bas Couwenberg.
• mdbtools/0.7.1-4 by Jean-Michel Nirgal Vourg re.
• mopidy uploaded by Stein Magnus Jodal, fixed by upstream.
• objenesis/2.1-1 by Markus Koschany.
• opendkim/2.10.1-2 uploaded by Scott Kitterman, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• pktools/2.6.3-1 by Bas Couwenberg.
• posh/0.12.4 uploaded by Clint Adams, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• prboom-plus/2:2.5.1.4~svn4425+dfsg1-1 by Fabian Greffrath.
• qlandkartegt/1.8.1+ds-1 by Bas Couwenberg.
• readosm/1.0.0d-1~exp2 by Bas Couwenberg.
• robocode/1.9.2.4-1 by Markus Koschany.
• ruby-prawn/2.0.1+dfsg-1 uploaded by C dric Boutillier, original patch by Lunar.
• sane-backends/1.0.25+git20150425-1 by J rg Frings-F rst.
• scoop/0.7.1-3 by Daniel Stender.
• springlobby/0.218-1 by Markus Koschany.
• subvertpy/0.9.2-1 by Jelmer Vernooij.
• t-prot/3.4-2 by Axel Beckert.
• talloc/2.1.2-3 by Jelmer Vernooij.
• tdb/1.3.4-2 by Jelmer Vernooij, patch now applied by upstream.
• tk-html3/3.0~fossil20110109-5 by Ole Streicher.
• tox/1.9.2-2 uploaded by Barry Warsaw original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• trove3/3.0.3-2 by Erich Schubert.
• txt2man/1.5.6-2 uploaded by Joao Eriberto Mota Filho, initial patch by Jonathan Wiltshire.
• units/2.11-2 by Stephen Kitt.
• win32-loader/0.7.10 upload by Didier Raboud, original patch by Lunar.
• zec/0.12-3 uploaded by Clint Adams, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• zomg/0.8-1 uploaded by Clint Adams, original patch by Chris Lamb.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues but not all of them:

• ada-reference-manual/1:2012.2-4 by Nicolas Boulenguez.
• adacontrol/1.16r11-3 by Nicolas Boulenguez.
• aspectj/1.8.5-1 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• binutils-m68hc1x/1:2.18-4 uploaded by Riku Voipio, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• debianutils/4.5) uploaded by Clint Adams, original patch by Lunar.
• ioquake3/1.36+u20150412+dfsg1-1 by Simon McVittie.
• libsdl1.2/1.2.15-11 uploaded by Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo, original patch by Chris Lamb; currently FTBFS.
• libsdl2/2.0.2+dfsg1-7 by Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo, original patch by Chris Lamb; currently FTBFS.
• nedit/1:5.6a-2 by Paul Gevers.
• openarena-085-data/0.8.5split-4 by Simon McVittie.
• openarena-data/0.8.5split-4 by Simon McVittie.
• openarena/0.8.8-12 by Simon McVittie.
• openchange/1:2.2-6 by Jelmer Vernooij.
• puredata/0.46.6-1 by IOhannes m zm lnig.
• pyexiv2/0.3.2-8 by Michal iha ; currently FTBFS.
• quakespasm/0.90.0-2 by Stephen Kitt.
• sed/4.2.2-5 by Clint Adams, patch by Lunar.
• v4l2loopback/0.8.0-5 uploaded by IOhannes m zm lnig, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• vim/2:7.4.712-1 uploaded by James McCoy, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• zookeeper/3.4.6-4 by Emmanuel Bourg.

Patches submitted which did not make their way to the archive yet:

• #783882 on jodconverter by Reiner Herrmann: tell javadoc to stop writing timestamps.
• #783885 on bind9 by Reiner Herrmann: pass -DNO_VERSION_DATE to build system.
• #783688 on serverstats by Chris Lamb: fix permissions.
• #783453 on cdbackup by Chris Lamb: remove build date from version string in binary.
• #783478 on texi2html by Juan Picca: pass --use-date to texi2html.
• #783933 on imagemagick by Reiner Herrmann: remove timestamps from PNG and use deterministic package build date.
• #783515 on memtest86+ by Lunar: fix embedded mtimes and pass -creation-date to genisoimage.
• #783558 on websvn by Chris Lamb: fix permissions.

Improvements to reproducible.debian.net Mattia Rizzolo has been working on compressing logs using gzip to save disk space. The web server would uncompress them on-the-fly for clients which does not accept gzip content. Mattia Rizzolo worked on a new page listing various breakage: missing or bad debbindiff output, missing build logs, unavailable build dependencies. Holger Levsen added a new execution environment to run debbindiff using dependencies from testing. This is required for packages built with GHC as the compiler only understands interfaces built by the same version. debbindiff development Version 17 has been uploaded to unstable. It now supports comparing ISO9660 images, dictzip files and should compare identical files much faster. Documentation update Various small updates and fixes to the pages about PDF produced by LaTeX, DVI produced by LaTeX, static libraries, Javadoc, PE binaries, and Epydoc. Package reviews Known issues have been tagged when known to be deterministic as some might unfortunately not show up on every single build. For example, two new issues have been identified by building with one timezone in April and one in May. RD and help2man add current month and year to the documentation they are producing. 1162 packages have been removed and 774 have been added in the past week. Most of them are the work of proper automated investigation done by Chris West. Summer of code Finally, we learned that both akira and Dhole were accepted for this Google Summer of Code. Let's welcome them! They have until May 25th before coding officialy begins. Now is the good time to help them feel more comfortable by sharing all these little bits of knowledge on how Debian works.

When we setup Freexian s offer to bring together funding from multiple companies in order to sponsor the work of multiple developers on Debian LTS, one of the rules that I imposed is that all paid contributors must provide a public monthly report of their paid work. While the LTS project officially started in June, the first month where contributors were actually paid has been July. Freexian sponsored Thorsten Alteholz and Holger Levsen for 10.5 hours each in July and for 16.5 hours each in August. Here are their reports:

• Thorsten Alteholz: July / August
• Holger Levsen: July / August

It s worth noting that Freexian sponsored Holger s work to fix the security tracker to support squeeze-lts. It s my belief that using the money of our sponsors to make it easier for everybody to contribute to Debian LTS is money well spent. As evidenced by the progress bar on Freexian s offer page, we have not yet reached our minimal goal of funding the equivalent of a half-time position. And it shows in the results, the dla-needed.txt still shows around 30 open issues. This is slightly better than the state two months ago but we can improve a lot on the average time to push out a security update To have an idea of the relative importance of the contributions of the paid developers, I counted the number of uploads made by Thorsten and Holger since July: of 40 updates, they took care of 19 of them, so about the half. I also looked at the other contributors: Rapha l Geissert stands out with 9 updates (I believe that he is contracted by lectricit de France for doing this) and most of the other contributors look like regular Debian maintainers taking care of their own packages (Paul Gevers with cacti, Christoph Berg with postgresql, Peter Palfrader with tor, Didier Raboud with cups, Kurt Roeckx with openssl, Balint Reczey with wireshark) except Matt Palmer and Luciano Bello who (likely) are benevolent members of the LTS team. There are multiple things to learn here:

1. Paid contributors already handle almost 70% of the updates. Counting only on volunteers would not have worked.
2. Quite a few companies that promised help (and got mentioned in the press release) have not delivered the promised help yet (neither through Freexian nor directly).

Last but not least, this project wouldn t exist without the support of multiple companies and organizations. Many thanks to them:

• Gold sponsors:
  • The Positive Internet
• Silver sponsors:
  • AD&D David Ayers IntarS Austria
  • Blablacar
  • Domeneshop AS
  • Evolix
  • Universit Lille 3
• Bronze sponsors:
  • Freeside Internet Service
  • MyTux
  • Offensive Security
  • Seznam.cz, a.s.

Hopefully this list will expand over time! Any help to reach out to new companies and organizations is more than welcome.

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