About "Deterministic Builds"

Ever considered writing the compiler in a deterministic way/language?

Then you get the same result every time.

But noo.. that would be actually solve the problem properly. Instead let's put hundreds of hours of effort into carrying around an entire OS in some kind of 'default state' so that all the randomness of your buildsystem in neutralized.

This is programming (aka toiletscrubber retard bricklayer) logic.

How much worse can the software industry get?

>>9

Surely this is only the case if you are linking dependencies statically?

Indeed, but such is the nature of most scenarios of deterministic builds - the result contains every dependency (no matter if object code of the .exe, or as .dll tucked sideways - all of those are to be deterministic). That's win32.

As for the UNIX world, the only time deterministic builds really matter is a static binary - kernel, or -static linked application. Because the rest makes no sense or is indication of really poor understanding of unix (think Ubuntu-only binaries).

Headers = ABI

Sadly not, headers can be and often are much more than mere ABI interfaces - they can contain inlineable code.

You can have #ifdef which depends on the CPU of host compiler machine for example. That ifdef encompasses static inline routine, or a macro which gets instantiated. Meaning you get different result according to host.

Thats why you don't make the distinction between all headers and the application using those - they can be treated as one and the same.