[MacPorts] #69976: Set ports tree timestamps based on commit times

[MacPorts]

#69976: Set ports tree timestamps based on commit times
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  Reporter:  jmroot          |      Owner:  admin@…
      Type:  enhancement     |     Status:  new
  Priority:  Normal          |  Milestone:
 Component:  server/hosting  |    Version:
Resolution:                  |   Keywords:
      Port:                  |
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Comment (by ryandesign):

 I'm not very interested in what other distributions do; I'm interested in
 what makes sense.

 I never imagined that the definition of "the source code files" might be
 in dispute, but let's do this. The source code is the code provided by
 upstream, and any patches or additional files we add to it. In other
 words, the source code is the contents of worksrcdir. It does not include
 the Portfile or the patchfiles or anything else in portdir.

 I do not know much about Debian except that they do not do things like
 MacPorts does. Debian repackages upstream source code into a new archive.
 I have often seen upstream projects ship a "debian" folder; I guess for
 those that don't, Debian's repackaging would add that. The [https
 ://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/ SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
 documentation], which was written by a Debian contributor and is thus
 probably biased toward their needs and customs, mentions that they parse
 debian/changelog and use the timestamp of the last entry in it (not the
 changelog's timestamp). That's obviously inapplicable to MacPorts.

 It would make no sense for the source date epoch to be changed just
 because someone made a whitespace-only change to a Portfile or changed the
 port's maintainer, for example.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/69976#comment:3>
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