Notes for mpich - reproducible builds result

Version annotated: 3.1-5
Identified issues:
Identifier: fonts_in_pdf_files
Description The internally used names/identifiers of fonts embedded into PDF files varies.
The order of embedded fonts can also be different.
.
The order is only different if the date differs (set by TZ environment
variable for example). If the date is the same, then the font name
is reproducible. Difference in hour/minute/second resolution seems
to be irrelevant.
.
The font name occurs in the /BaseFont field and in the /Fontname field.
The name is of the form XXXXXX+YYY where the XXXXXX part is the one that
varies and is called the subset_tag. It is generated in
texk/web2c/pdftexdir/utils.c function make_subset_tag() from an MD5 sum
over the font glyphs.
Identifier: paths_vary_due_to_usrmerge
Description eg. /bin/ vs /usr/bin/ or /lib vs. /usr/lib
Identifier: bin_sh_is_bash
Description Various issues that are caused from whether /bin/sh is dash or bash.
Comments: examples/Makefile and examples/cpi contains shell and usrmerge
variations. Ordering of lines in examples/Makefile.in appears to
be non-deterministic.
.
The paths_vary_due_to_usrmerge issue does not seem RC despite #994388,
since it only affects examples.
 

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).