@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ There was a significant progress made in the [Debian](https://debian.org/) Linux
* Roland Clobus continued work on reproducible 'live' images in the past month, and some of his work [was merged into *live-build* itself](https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/commit/a599f50e480e8755d61f515c4351ee2dd33d89a3). The [ReproducibleInstalls/LiveImages](https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleInstalls/LiveImages) page on the [Debian Wiki](https://wiki.debian.org/) as well as the existing/custom Jenkins hooks [were updated to match](https://salsa.debian.org/qa/jenkins.debian.net/-/commit/19113c3cd557aed95807a868b477a84c75f8bb57o).
* Related to this, it is now possible to create a bit-by-bit reproducible chroots using [`mmdebstrap`](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mmdebstrap) when `SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH` is set. As of Debian 11 Bullseye, this worksfor all variants, except for the variant that includes all so-called '`Priority: standard`' packages where `fontconfig` caches, `*.pyc` files and man-db `index.db` are unreproducible. (These issues have been addressed in [Tails](https://tails.boum.org/) and *live-build* by [removing](https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/blob/stable/config/chroot_local-hooks/99-remove_pyc)[`*.pyc` files](https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/blob/master/share/hooks/normal/0170-remove-python-py.hook.chroot), in addition to [removing](https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/blob/stable/config/chroot_local-hooks/99-zzzzzz_reproducible-builds-post-processing#L28)[`index.db`](https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/blob/master/share/hooks/normal/0190-remove-temporary-files.hook.chroot#L6) files as well. (Whilst `index.db` files can be regenerated, there is no straightforward method to re-creating `*.pyc` files, and the resulting installation will suffer from reduced performance of Python scripts. Ideally, no removal would be necessary as all files would be created reproducibly in the first place.)
* Related to this, it is now possible to create a bit-by-bit reproducible chroots using [`mmdebstrap`](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mmdebstrap) when `SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH` is set. As of Debian 11 Bullseye, this worksfor all variants, except for the variant that includes all so-called '`Priority: standard`' packages where `fontconfig` caches, `*.pyc` files and man-db `index.db` are unreproducible. (These issues have been addressed in [Tails](https://tails.boum.org/) and *live-build* by [removing](https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/blob/stable/config/chroot_local-hooks/99-remove_pyc)[`*.pyc` files](https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/blob/master/share/hooks/normal/0170-remove-python-py.hook.chroot), in addition to [removing](https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/blob/stable/config/chroot_local-hooks/99-zzzzzz_reproducible-builds-post-processing#L28)[`index.db`](https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/blob/master/share/hooks/normal/0190-remove-temporary-files.hook.chroot#L6) files as well. (Whilst `index.db` files can be regenerated, there is no straightforward method to re-creating `*.pyc` files, and the resulting installation will suffer from reduced performance of Python scripts. Ideally, no removal would be necessary as all files would be created reproducibly in the first place.)
* Further to this work, Roland wrote up a [comprehensive status update about *live-build* ISO images](https://lists.reproducible-builds.org/pipermail/rb-general/2022-January/002472.html) to [our mailing list](https://lists.reproducible-builds.org/listinfo/rb-general/) as well.