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Date:      Sat, 10 Aug 2002 16:43:54 -0700
From:      Colin Percival <Colin_Percival@sfu.ca>
To:        Wouter Van Hemel <wouter@pair.com>, Colin Percival <Colin_Percival@sfu.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: release variability
Message-ID:  <5.0.2.1.1.20020810163418.02072c10@popserver.sfu.ca>
In-Reply-To: <1028991462.212.32.camel@cocaine>
References:  <5.0.2.1.1.20020810024458.02035e48@popserver.sfu.ca> <5.0.2.1.1.20020808000218.01fcd120@popserver.sfu.ca> <5.0.2.1.1.20020810024458.02035e48@popserver.sfu.ca>

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At 16:57 10/08/2002 +0200, Wouter Van Hemel wrote:
>On Sat, 2002-08-10 at 15:13, Colin Percival wrote:
> >    This raises two questions:
> > 1. Is there any way I can set up my system to consistently build the same
> > world?
 >
>I think what you're trying to do here is impossible. Every condition would
>have to be the same as on the initial build machine, and even then, your
>time will not always match. Whatever you're trying to do, it seems like
>the wrong solution to me...

   I don't need to build the same result as the machine which built the 
published -RELEASE; what I'd like to do, however, is  perform various 
builds along the RELENG_x_y branch in such a way that I can identify which 
files had real changes, so that updates (consisting of only the changed 
files) can be published.

> > 2. Is this really a desireable state of affairs at all?  As it is, it is
> > practically impossible for someone to `make release` on their own and
> > compare their version to the official version to ensure that the build was
> > correct.  Reproducibility and verifiability are rather important matters
> > when it comes to security.
> >
>
>There are better ways to check the integrity of the code. The most simple
>way I can think of, is if you e.g. install from a cd, check the md5sum.

   You misunderstand me.  We have to trust the source code we receive; as 
it is, we have to either build our own release or trust one machine to 
build it for us.
   If `make release` always produced the same result given the same source 
tree, then several machines could build the release and publish the md5 sum 
of the result.  Trusting several independant machines which agree on an 
answer is much safer than trusting a single machine (and makes that single 
machine less of a target).

Colin Percival



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