Re:A tool to make Windows builds reproducible
by metaphor on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @04:27AM
(#13113338)
OP actually pointed to an interesting reference[1] which briefly touches on the impact of pseudo-random number generation, amongst other things.
Diving a little bit deeper down the same rabbit hole, David A. Wheeler[2] (as he emphatically insists on being cited) also made note of threads with non-deterministic scheduling. Lots of notes on hardware-centric implications as well.
Definitely turns my perspective around on what it means to trust software. I suppose the effort is a proper graduation from masturbating[3] to safe sex, so to speak.
[1] https://reproducible-builds.org/docs/
[2] http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8&feature=youtu.be...
One potential for nondeterminism is if the compiler or linker is multithreaded, and multiple threads could update a shared data structure in no fixed order.