Notes for littler - reproducible builds result

Version annotated: 0.3.1-1
Identified issues:
Identifier: randomness_in_r_rdb_rds_databases
Description R creates .rdb files and .rds with some randomness. They are a serialisation of some
sorts, related to lazy loading of modules?
Randomness seems to come from using absolute paths in .rd[bs] files.
.
Is not related to https://bugs.debian.org/774031 / r_base_appends_built_header_to_description_files
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We have a pending patch to fix most of these (463/478) packages at the time
of writing) upstream in R:
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https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2017-April/074138.html
.
When this is accepted into R upstream, commit 28d4af25 may be
(un-)reverted to remove these packages. In the meantime, please do not
remove this issue, nor mark it as deterministic, nor untag these packages.
.
The remaining ~15 packages are not completely fixed by this patch, so this
issue should remain, even when our upstream patch is accepted. These
packages will need to be investigated and fixed individually, see our blog
post on how to do that:
.
https://reproducible-builds.org/news/2017/05/03/reproduciing-r-packages/
Identifier: gcc_captures_build_path
Description Captures build path, e.g., /build/1st/foo-42.0 v. /build/foo-42.0/2nd
.
Until early 2024 we varied the build path when testing packages from unstable
and experimental, which we have stopped doing now as the build path is recorded
as part of the environment and thus can be used when rebuilding.
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This issue is kept here for the time being.
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dpkg-buildflags version 1.20.6+ sets -ffile-prefix-map by default
(and -fdebug-prefix-map in older versions) which fixes this issue
in many cases, but not all (see: records_build_flags).
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There are patches submitted upstream to address this specific issue, but they
are unlikely to be merged at this point:
.
https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2017-04/msg00513.html
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When this is accepted into GCC upstream, we could remove this note.
In the meantime, please do not remove this issue, nor mark it as deterministic,
nor untag these packages.
Comments: Appears to be locale-aware sorting issue: the array of strings in /usr/bin/r around "AirPassengers" appears to be sorted with LC_COLLATE=C on the left build and with LC_COLLATE=fr_??.UTF-8 on the right build. (The left is sorted as though by memcmp(), the right is sorted case-insensitively.)
.
However, I couldn't find the strings in question in the source package.
 

Our notes about issues affecting packages are stored in notes.git and are targeted at packages in Debian in 'unstable/amd64' (unless they say otherwise).