Tests fail with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH set

[smcv]

Debian builds official packages with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH set to the date in the Debian changelog, to get a reproducible result from the same source code.

Unfortunately, since 2021.3 this seems to be making several build-time unit tests fail with this message:

downgraded without --allow-downgrade?

I think this is probably because the tests build more than one ostree commit, expecting the second one to have a strictly higher mtime, but the new SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support gives them both the same mtime.

At the moment I'm working around this with unset SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH before running the tests in the packaging, but ideally the affected tests would unset this themselves.

[dbnicholson]

I agree with the workaround. Tests that want to check that behavior can set it explicitly. I think there's only one test that does handle it and it already does manage the variable. @lucab what do you think?

[lucab]

Yes, I'd agree it would be good to fix the tests upstream (i.e. here).
@smcv do you maybe have the logs from the failing test run somewhere? I couldn't find the 2021.3 packages/runs on debian infra yet. Is the failure showing up through a plain make check, or is it going through some other path?

It would be good to see what is the situation across the whole testsuite. If it is only upgrade with and without override-commit having issues, we can surgically fix the epochs there. If it is more widespread, libtest.sh may carry the tweak. Or perhaps both.

[smcv]

do you maybe have the logs from the failing test run somewhere?

From a previous attempt: ostree_2021.3-1_amd64_20210725t181136.build.gz

I couldn't find the 2021.3 packages/runs on debian infra yet

I didn't upload the version that was failing tests, because it was failing tests :-)

The finalized version of 2021.3-1 with the workaround is only in experimental so far, because Debian is in freeze for the Debian 11 release.

Is the failure showing up through a plain make check, or is it going through some other path?

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/ostree/-/blob/debian/experimental/debian/test.sh wraps make check, and currently has the workaround.

If it is more widespread

tests/test-pull-bare.sh, tests/test-pull-bareuser.sh, tests/test-pull-bareuseronly.sh, tests/test-admin-deploy-syslinux.sh, tests/test-admin-deploy-uboot.sh, tests/test-admin-deploy-grub2.sh, tests/test-admin-deploy-none.sh are all failing, so I think I'd be more comfortable with putting this in libtest.sh.