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Re: [PATCH] Facilitate deterministic pe executables between linker invocations
- From: nick clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>
- To: Cory Fields <cory at coryfields dot com>, binutils at sourceware dot org
- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 15:10:27 +0100
- Subject: Re: [PATCH] Facilitate deterministic pe executables between linker invocations
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <1380649206-19367-1-git-send-email-cory at coryfields dot com>
Hi Cory,
[Sorry for the delay in replying]
Only a tiny change is needed to avoid the random result. An
(entirely arbitrary) value of 1 is hard-coded rather than using the current
timestamp.
Is there a historical reason for the non-deterministic behavior?
Yes. :-)
Oh, you want to know the reason ? I believe that this is because
non-deterministic behaviour was not considered to be important, and that
having a timestamped executable was thought to be a helpful feature.
(For example the timestamp could be used like a build-id to identify a
specific release of a binary to a customer).
If so, would
it be reasonable to add an option similar to enable-deterministic-archives to
disable it?
Yes it would.
Cheers
Nick