Reproducible builds are a set of software development + practices which create a verifiable path from human readable + source code to the binary code used by computers. In brief, + the idea is that building the same binary, software package, + document, or other binary artifact twice from the same source + produces identical output. The reproducible-builds.org website + provides background information and documentation on making + builds reproducible.
+ +Many folks have contributed to the reproducible build effort + in &os; src and ports over the last decade. There are many + practical benefits of reproducible builds, such as bandwidth + and storage savings. However, there is a growing interest in + the broad open source and free software communities, + primarily from a software and toolchain integrity perspective. + Over the last few years, some members of the Debian Project + have led a comprehensive and structured reproducible builds + effort.
+ +Baptiste Daroussin and Ed Maste attended the first + Reproducible Builds Summit in Athens last year. Since then, + Ed investigated the state of build reproducibility + in the ports tree, and presented + Reproducible Builds in &os; at BSDCan 2016. With + some work in progress patches, over 80% of the &os; ports tree + builds reproducibly.
+ +The Diffoscope tool performs in-depth comparison of files, + archives, or directories to understand why a binary artifact + does not build reproducibly. Diffoscope results for the + nonreproducible builds in Ed's talk are available at one of + the links above.
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