From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:19:02 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: add reproducible script
X-Git-Url: https://git.libre-soc.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=7a4483464feb6520920ab04987e535ba11a557ab;p=dev-env-setup.git

add reproducible script
---

diff --git a/README.mdwn b/README.mdwn
index 6c498ce..5265d50 100644
--- a/README.mdwn
+++ b/README.mdwn
@@ -7,7 +7,10 @@ get started.
 
 All packages are installed within a baseline debian/10 debootstrapped
 schroot.  For reproducible builds, you have to pick an OS, and debian/10
-is good enough
+is good enough.  Note, obviously, that adding security updates would
+completely defeat the purpose and object of being "reproducible", so
+it is *strongly recommended* that you do **not** make these chrooted
+installs internet-facing.
 
 Prerequisites:
 
@@ -35,6 +38,34 @@ Installs (at recent but usually specific - reproducible - versions):
 
 Note: we don't use conda.  we don't use docker.
 
+# Why reproducible?
+
+Imagine that you are about to drop USD 16 million on 7nm mask charges.
+Two - or more - engineers run the VLSI build scripts, to create the
+Multi-Terabyte GDS-II Files.  You have a week before the deadline: it
+takes 48 hours to run the VLSI build.  You find that, after 48 hours,
+a comparison of all the engineer's GDS-II files show differences.
+
+More than a week's worth of investigation - long after the deadline
+has been missed to submit the Masks to the Foundry (which you paid for
+up-front and now cannot recover) - you discover that one developer
+used Ubuntu and had a PRNG library that created a different Place-and-Route
+sequence, another used BSD which had an older library with a bug, and yet
+another had installed security updates which changed memory-allocation.
+
+The "perfect" reproducible build system uses absolutely identical hardware,
+installs on bare-metal (no Virtual Machines), does a complete and full
+OS wipe and automated install, and, after running, if two *Drives* are
+compared, they should be bit-level identical.  This is of course a little
+extreme (but hey, you're spending USD 16 million on 7nm masks then you're
+entitled to a little paranoia) so the closest we can get is:
+
+* (a) pick an OS
+* (b) don't add updates and
+* (c) pin as many packages with explicit versions and git tags as possible.
+
+It works. don't knock it.
+
 # Installation Notes
 
 During their development, each install script had notes taken which,