Reproducible Properties

[Alan Bateman]

On 29/09/2019 14:08, Robert Scholte wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the Maven team gets quite some requests regarding reproducible builds.
> Depending on the source we're able to fix it ourselves.
> However, in case of writing properties via Properties.store() we'll 
> get unreproducible properties, because it includes the current 
> Date().[1]. The only option we have right now is writing our own 
> Properties writer.
> I'm kind of surprised not to find any related issue, but does it make 
> sense to make the inclusion of the date optional?
The Properties.store methods have always been specified to write a 
comment line with the current date and time. It wouldn't be unreasonable 
to look at changing it to not specify a date/time comment when the 
comment is provided by the user of the API but changing it after 20+ 
years would need effort to understand the impact. I think the bigger 
issue with reproducibility is that the ordering that the properties are 
written is not specified. Reproducible builds are important but maybe it 
needs Maven tooling or plugin to do smart comparisons. I think this is 
something that the Skara project was looking into at one point.

-Alan