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openSUSE Spin Achieves 100% Bit-Identical Packages For Reproducible Builds
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this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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And here I thought this was kinda already the case. 🫣
There is a reason why NixOS was invented 21 years ago. Reproducible builds are not simple in most ~~packaging~~ build systems.
I believe it's less about the packaging system and more about the build system. You're building source code from thousands of individual projects, getting a reproducible output is difficult if, for example, some library embeds the build date/time in its output.
Nix doesn't really guarantee reproduciblity, though. It's a neat idea for deterministic configurations. But bit by bit reproducible binary builds are an entire difference beast. GNU Guix has way more promise in that regard
Why tho? I'm a software developer but I don't do much with build systems. With the same source code, shouldn't the resulting binary always be the same too?
You need the same source code, the same exact build tools, the same exact libraries that it depends on, and the same exact OS. Additionally every single build has to be reproducible - so not including in its output, say, the build date/time or any information about the host that built it. Now you need to repeat that for thousands of packages.