Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 1/2] hvmloader: remove timestamp from smbios

["Jan Beulich" <JBeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

>>> On 03.02.15 at 17:23, <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 03/02/15 16:15, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>>> On 03.02.15 at 17:02, <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On 03/02/15 15:54, Olaf Hering wrote:
>>>> Including a timestamp into the binary makes it impossible to get
>>>> reproducible binaries. Remove the timestamp because it carries no
>>>> valuable info.
>>> I agree with the sentiment, but this is not how to do it.
>>>
>>> A release date is part of the SMBIOS spec, and the change below results
>>> in a malformed smbios table (stale p->release_date_str = 3; pointer)
>>>
>>> A better approach would be to derive the date from the commit date of
>>> HEAD, which would be consistent across rebuilds.
>> Except that this information may not be available, and isn't really
>> relevant. Instead I'd suggest using the source time stamp of
>> smbios.c, as that's really the (almost) only thing controlling the
>> data presented to the guest.
>>
>> Or maybe - considering that git checkouts use the current time
>> for file timestamps rather than the last modification time - use
>> HEAD's if available, and fall back to smbios.c's otherwise.
> 
> Both good points.  That sounds like the best approach.

Or actually, rather than HEAD's time stamp that of the most
recent commit touching smbios.c.

Jan


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