Re: make dist using git archive

On 22.01.24 21:04, Tristan Partin wrote:
> I am not really following why we can't use the builtin Meson dist
> command. The only difference from my testing is it doesn't use a
> --prefix argument.

Here are some problems I have identified:

1. meson dist internally runs gzip without the -n option. That makes
the tar.gz archive include a timestamp, which in turn makes it not
reproducible.

2. Because gzip includes a platform indicator in the archive, the
produced tar.gz archive is not reproducible across platforms. (I don't
know if gzip has an option to avoid that. git archive uses an internal
gzip implementation that handles this.)

3. Meson does not support tar.bz2 archives.

4. Meson uses git archive internally, but then unpacks and repacks the
archive, which loses the ability to use git get-tar-commit-id.

5. I have found that the tar archives created by meson and git archive
include the files in different orders. I suspect that the Python
tarfile module introduces some either randomness or platform dependency.

6. meson dist is also slower because of the additional work.

7. meson dist produces .sha256sum files but we have called them .sha256.
(This is obviously trivial, but it is something that would need to be
dealt with somehow nonetheless.)

Most or all of these issues are fixable, either upstream in Meson or by
adjusting our own requirements. But for now this route would have some
significant disadvantages.