Re: [PATCH] Improve ant-build-system.

[Leo Famulari]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 04:57:11PM +0100, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> 
> Leo Famulari <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 03:50:38PM +0100, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> >> Hi Guix,
> >> 
> >> our ant-build-system currently throws away the jar manifest, because it
> >> was difficult to control its timestamp.  Without a manifest many jars
> >> cannot be used, though.  Oops!
> >> 
> >> The manifest and the directory it is in always get the current time,
> >> which is very annoying.  Since controlling the timestamp is not possible
> >> with “jar”, this patch repacks the jar archive with “zip”.  The only
> >> thing we need to take care of is to ensure that the manifest file
> >> appears first.
> >
> > So, the timestamp issue is avoided by using "zip"? Just curious, I would
> > want to block this change regardless.

I meant to write "wouldn't".

> 
> Correct.  “jar” doesn’t just create an archive, it also sets the
> timestamp of the manifest.  “zip” doesn’t care about manifest timestamps
> and will just take the files as they are.  Since we reset timestamps of
> all files in the archive this means that the manifest will have the same
> timestamp as any other file in the archive.  This makes the jar archive
> reproducible.

Cool, I'm glad we have this option!

> 
> ~~ Ricardo