And here I thought this was kinda already the case. 🫣
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
71 points (98.6% liked)
Linux
50370 readers
1292 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
There is a reason why NixOS was invented 21 years ago. Reproducible builds are not simple in most ~~packaging~~ build systems.
Nix doesn't really guarantee reproduciblity, though. It's a neat idea for deterministic configurations. But bit by bit reproducible binary builds are an entire difference beast. GNU Guix has way more promise in that regard
I believe it's less about the packaging system and more about the build system. You're building source code from thousands of individual projects, getting a reproducible output is difficult if, for example, some library embeds the build date/time in its output.
Why tho? I'm a software developer but I don't do much with build systems. With the same source code, shouldn't the resulting binary always be the same too?
You need the same source code, the same exact build tools, the same exact libraries that it depends on, and the same exact OS. Additionally every single build has to be reproducible - so not including in its output, say, the build date/time or any information about the host that built it. Now you need to repeat that for thousands of packages.
Not necessarily. Timestamps, file paths, and other environment metadata can easily sneak into an executable and make a program not build reproducibly
Thought I would mention Guix. I don't know about using it as an OS but just the package manager is so nice to build reproducible software environments (although disclaimer I discovered this myself a few weeks ago). At least as close you can get without including proprietary hardware drivers. Building MPI applications on my laptop and moving them to an HPC cluster with full performance feels like magic.
This is awesome!