A tool to make Windows builds reproducible

Re:A tool to make Windows builds reproducible by Seylerius on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @01:48AM (#13112718)

On the one hand, my knee-jerk reaction to this involves a meaningful amount of Windows-hate. In short: there is a tight limit to the amount of trust I can give to any build on a platform that I can't build.

On the other hand, reproducible builds are /important/. The better we can trust our tools and verify that they're exactly what we think they are, the less we need to worry about the security of our tools, and the more we can get on with /using them/.

In the end, despite enabling the continued use of a deeply proprietary and anti-freedom platform, this is a good thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A tool to make Windows builds reproducible by davexunit on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @12:27PM (#13116399)

Agreed. The GNU Guix project (of which I am one of the developers) sees reproducibility as a means to an end: empowering users with verifiable, trustable software that they can control. Thus, reproducible builds on a proprietary system, while better than non-reproducible builds on a proprietary system, don't accomplish very much for user freedom.

https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/reproducible-builds-a...

[ Parent | on HN ]