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by crvdgc 7 days ago
Nix also needs the build output to be deterministic to calculate the hash. It also has the problems of timestamps etc. The build environment tries to be hermetic by setting the time to be epoch among other things.
3 comments

SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is not a Nix thing

https://reproducible-builds.org/docs/source-date-epoch/

(although Nix sets it as a default)

Nix hashes the build inputs, for which deterministic builds are not required, only desirable.
Yes, reading this I was thinking about how many of these problems go away with a nix environment. Certainly not all of them, but it’s a great way to get a reproducible build environment that includes direct specification of system dependencies.