[trinity-devel] Embedded metadata × reproducible builds

Hi all, as you probably know, if tdelibs are compiled with elf editor support (WITH_ELFICON), the application icon, TDE information and git repository information are embedded into libraries and binaries during CMake build. This data, on the one hand, provides user convenience - better to see the application icon than the general binaries icon. On the other hand, they provide information to developers - for example, when reporting creashes. It is possible that you have also heard about the activity Reproducible builds, which seems to us as a very good idea. See: https://reproducible-builds.org/ https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds Currently, the metadata that are embedded has a Compilation Date/Time entry. This is set to the current date and time at the time of building the binary package. And this is a problem because it makes it impossible to achieve reproducible builds. My suggestion is that next to the ".tdescmmodule" and ".tdescmrevision" files we could have a ".tdescmdatetime" file containing the git commit date and/or a ".tdepackagedatetime" file containing the date the source package was created for distribution. For embedded metadata, this fixed time would be used instead of variable time. What is your opinion? Cheers -- Slávek