The SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH environment variable is used in reproducible
builds to set build timestamps and is generally synonymous with
reproducible builds: instead of making users figure out how to pass
pahole flags (e.g. explicitly setting PAHOLE_FLAGS in linux) just assume
that the user wants a reproducible build if this variable is set.
The impact on build time appears to be minimal enough even if we
incorrectly make this decision (on a Ryzen 7 7735HS):
$ hyperfine 'sh pahole-test -j --reproducible_build' 'sh pahole-test -j1' 'sh pahole-test -j' -p 'cp .tmp_vmlinux.orig .tmp_vmlinux.btf' -m 4
Benchmark 1: sh pahole-test -j --reproducible_build
Time (mean ± σ): 3.991 s ± 0.045 s [User: 7.223 s, System: 3.741 s]
Range (min … max): 3.950 s … 4.042 s 4 runs
Benchmark 2: sh pahole-test -j1
Time (mean ± σ): 7.083 s ± 0.095 s [User: 4.805 s, System: 2.242 s]
Range (min … max): 6.964 s … 7.191 s 4 runs
Benchmark 3: sh pahole-test -j
Time (mean ± σ): 3.858 s ± 0.089 s [User: 13.447 s, System: 7.078 s]
Range (min … max): 3.763 s … 3.978 s 4 runs
Summary
sh pahole-test -j ran
1.03 ± 0.03 times faster than sh pahole-test -j --reproducible_build
1.84 ± 0.05 times faster than sh pahole-test -j1
Where pahole-test is the pahole command of the linux build (minus -j):
LLVM_OBJCOPY=objcopy pahole -J --btf_gen_floats --lang_exclude=rust --skip_encoding_btf_inconsistent_proto --btf_gen_optimized .tmp_vmlinux.btf "$@"
And .tmp_vmlinux.orig was the .tmp_vmlinux.btf binary before being
processed:
ld -m elf_x86_64 -z noexecstack --no-warn-rwx-segments --emit-relocs --discard-none -z max-page-size=0x200000 --build-id=sha1 --orphan-handling=warn --script=./arch/x86/kernel/vmlinux.lds -o .tmp_vmlinux.btf --whole-archive vmlinux.a .vmlinux.export.o init/version-timestamp.o --no-whole-archive --start-group --end-group
---
I opened this as https://github.com/acmel/dwarves/pull/51 a couple of
weeks ago but I guess sending by e-mail is probably more appropriate.
(I didn't find a MAINTAINERS list or similar so sending to recipients of
a random patch I found, please tell me if I missed someone)
(Note that because --btf_feature init is lazy setting something like
--btf_feature=default could override this if we set it too early, so I'm
only checking the env var after argp parsing)
pahole.c | 4 ++++
1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
diff --git a/pahole.c b/pahole.c
index 954498d2ad4f..2b010658330c 100644
--- a/pahole.c
+++ b/pahole.c
@@ -3705,6 +3705,10 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[])
goto out;
}
+ /* This being set means whoever called us tries to do a reproducible build */
+ if (getenv("SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH"))
+ conf_load.reproducible_build = true;
+
if (languages.str && parse_languages())
return rc;
--
2.44.0
