One of the planned changes for Fedora 43 was setting an expectation that RPM package builds are reproducible. Much of Fedora’s “reproducible builds” effort is already complete but this change has now been deferred to the Fedora 44 release next year.
The hope was for Fedora 43 that “no fewer than 99%” of the RPM package builds are reproducible. The plan was to establish a clear mandate: “package builds are expected to be reproducible.”
This followed distribution-wide improvements around enhancing reproducible builds handling while lingering issues need to be solved at the individual package level. For example, some packages having irreproducible debug data, Secure Boot signing using a private key, and other packaging nuances. The change proposal page outlines more details on their reproducible build plans.
With not everything being wrapped up though for Fedora 43 and the change deadline upon us, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) voted at yesterday’s meeting that the change is being deferred to Fedora 44.
It was also at that FESCo meeting yesterday where they decided to alter the Fedora ARM release requirements due to QA staffing shortages.
