Support reproducible builds

[rolfbjarne]

Submitted by Jo Shields [MSFT] on 2016-01-03 15:37 UTC

As of 26842, when Mono compiles C# code, it uses a zero timestamp, such that multiple repeated builds of the same code always are bit-identical. See https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/About for background on why this is good.

The same does not apply to Mono's VB.NET compiler:

> directhex@bubblegum:/tmp$ vbnc hello.vb 2>&1 > /dev/null
> directhex@bubblegum:/tmp$ md5sum hello.exe 
> 3135b3a568302ef1f622772933d4c48b  hello.exe
> directhex@bubblegum:/tmp$ vbnc hello.vb 2>&1 > /dev/null
> directhex@bubblegum:/tmp$ md5sum hello.exe 
> 62b0193ee7fc1f5aca0d36bce999148a  hello.exe
> directhex@bubblegum:/tmp$ vbnc hello.vb 2>&1 > /dev/null
> directhex@bubblegum:/tmp$ md5sum hello.exe 
> 1c1d15aedb741dfe79e5cb195a3c6a9d  hello.exe

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Reference: https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=37366