`SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH`[is a standardised environment variable](https://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/) that distributions can set centrally and have build tools consume this in order to produce reproducible output.
`SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH` is a [standardised environment variable](https://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/) that distributions can set centrally and have build tools consume this in order to produce reproducible output.
Before implementing this, you should scan through [our checklist](https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/StandardEnvironmentVariables#Checklist) to see if you can avoid implementing it.
We operate a large and many-featured [Jenkins](https://jenkins.io/)-based testing framework that powers [`tests.reproducible-builds.org`](https://tests.reproducible-builds.org). Amongst many other tasks, this tracks the status of our reproducibility efforts across many distributions as well as identifies any regressions that have been introduced. This month, Holger Levsen made the following changes: