Re: [PATCH 1/3] Documentation: allow overriding timestamps of generated asciidoc

Jonathan Nieder [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

touch -d @SECONDS isn't POSIX compliant, and non-Linux systems don't
provide it.  POSIX only allows certain fixed format, and I assume that
non-Linux parties (maybe OpenBSD) will want to have reproducible builds
as well.

Interesting.  My knee-jerk preference is still to go with this patch
as-is for now, since the non-portability only triggers when
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is set.

As long as this patch is kept Debian-only, that is a sensible stance
to take.  I am not sure (note: this is different from "I do not think")
if it is also OK for the wider public, though.

I wondered if this affects the dirtyness of the build, regardless of
how file timestamps are mucked with.  It turns out that we do not
use "describe --dirty" in the GIT-VERSION-GEN script, so perhaps
it would be OK.