reproducible builds of FreeBSD in a chroot on Linux

[Julian Elischer]

On 5/7/15 5:22 PM, Holger Levsen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm one of the people involved in https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
> and have set up https://reproducible.debian.net which continously tests all
> packages in the Debian archive for build reproducibility (so far on amd64
> only).
>
> For those who don't know, reproducible builds enable everyone to independently
> verify that a given binary comes from specific source. This also allows to
> indirectly verify that one's build system has not been tempered with - and
> more. Please check the first URL of this mail for "the rest of the story".
>
> And then someone pointed me to https://wiki.freebsd.org/ReproducibleBuilds
> - kudos for how far you already!(!!)
>
> So now I would like to build freebsd myself, twice, and compare the results
> and show these results as in
> https://reproducible.debian.net/rb-pkg/unstable/amd64/gcc-4.9.html - and then
> quite probably set up a jenkins job on jenkins.debian.net and do this every
> week.
>
> Here's the catch: I have basically no clue about freebsd - and I want to
> build on Debian linux (on amd64) in a chroot. (And, it will need you people to
> look at the results and eventually fix them!) ;-)
>
> So maybe can you help me with my next step. I've found the github freebsd
> repo and cloned it, how to proceed further now?
>
> $ make buildworld
> Makefile:137: *** missing separator.  Stop.
>
> in the master branch of git://github.com/freebsd/freebsd wasn't right.. :/ ;)
>
>
> Thanks for any help and pointers! I've tried to find documentation on this but
> had no luck so I figured  I could just ask...
>
>
> cheers,
> 	Holger
>
> (please cc: me I'm not subscribed.)


Cross compiling FreeBSD from another platform has been a "gee the 
might be nice" goal for
some years but it really never gets to the top of the list.
Since virtual machines are so easy to make these days it's become 
easier to just install
a freeBSD VM and do the build there. (maybe with an NFS mounted 
filesystem from the host).
Compiling Linux on FreeBSD is equally difficult I believe.


If you really wanted to you could look at he kFreeBSD project and 
maybe they have a
way to do stuff..

As for reproducible builds, Colin (CC'd) did some work on 
characterising the reproducibility
for use with FreeBSD update, which knows the few non reproducible 
things and excludes
them when working out what changed..  basically timestamps etc.

He may have more to add..

also: By "FreeBSD" do you mean the kernel? or the whole system?
Unlike Linux, FreeBSD includes most of what the Linux world would 
consider to be
the domain of the base distro..  e.g. cat, ls, cc, etc.

There may also be a better mailing list for this...