Re: Stability of git-archive, breaking (?) the Github universe, and a possible solution

February 1, 2023 4:40 AM, "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" [off-list ref] wrote:

As people have come to rely on the exact "deflate"
implementation "git archive" promises to invoke the system's
"gzip" binary by default, under the assumption that its output
is stable. If that's no longer the case you'll need to complain
to whoever maintains your local "gzip".

Surely if reproducibility of .tar.gz files is the goal,"invoke
whatever arbitrary binary on $PATH happens to be called gzip" is an
poor solution.

It is only even possible to consider stabilizing gzip output as a
goal for Git (although this seems ill-advised for the reasons
Brian already discussed) in the post-2.38 world where git is
doing the gzipping.

If one has the requirement to substitute one's own specific
compressor, there is an option for that.