(please keep me CCd, I am not subscribed)

Dear R developers,

At the Reproducible Builds project we've been trying to get build tools and 
packages generate bit-for-bit identical output, even under different build 
paths. This is beneficial for users because they can more easily compare their 
builds with others, as well as other reasons.

At the moment about 400 out of 26000 Debian packages are unreproducible due to 
how R writes paths.rds files as well as RDB files. An example diff is here:

https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/rb-pkg/unstable/amd64/diffoscope-results/r-cran-tensor.html

I've attached a patch (applies to both 3.3.3 and 3.4) that fixes this issue; 
however I know it's not perfect and would welcome feedback on how to make it 
acceptable to the R project.

For example, I've tried to limit the effects of the patch only to the RDB 
loading/saving code, but I'm not familiar with the codebase so it would be good 
if someone could verify that I did this correctly. Then, ideally we would also 
add some tests to ensure that unreproduciblity does not crop back in "by 
accident". R code heavily relies on absolute paths, and I went down several 
dead-ends chasing and editing variables containing absolute paths, before I 
finally managed to get this working patch, so I suspect that without specific 
reproducibility tests, this issue might recur in the future.

I've checked that the existing tests still pass, with this patch applied to the 
Debian package. I have some errors like:

-  Warning message:
-  In utils::packageDescription(basename(dir), dirname(dir)) :
-    no package 'cluster' was found
-* checking R files for non-ASCII characters ... OK
-* checking R files for syntax errors ... OK
:* checking whether the package can be loaded ... ERROR

but I also get the same errors when I build the unpatched Debian package. And 
if I run e.g. `Rscript -e 'library(cluster)'` with a patched Rscript, there is 
no error and the exit code is 0.

Ximin

-- 
GPG: ed25519/56034877E1F87C35
GPG: rsa4096/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE
https://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git
diff -u r-base-3.3.3/debian/changelog r-base-3.3.3/debian/changelog
--- r-base-3.3.3.orig/src/library/base/R/namespace.R
+++ r-base-3.3.3/src/library/base/R/namespace.R
@@ -190,7 +190,8 @@
 
 loadNamespace <- function (package, lib.loc = NULL,
                            keep.source = getOption("keep.source.pkgs"),
-                           partial = FALSE, versionCheck = NULL)
+                           partial = FALSE, versionCheck = NULL,
+                           relpath = FALSE)
 {
     libpath <- attr(package, "LibPath")
     package <- as.character(package)[[1L]]
@@ -246,9 +247,9 @@
             attr(dimpenv, "name") <- paste("lazydata", name, sep = ":")
             setNamespaceInfo(env, "lazydata", dimpenv)
             setNamespaceInfo(env, "imports", list("base" = TRUE))
-            ## this should be an absolute path
-            setNamespaceInfo(env, "path",
-                             normalizePath(file.path(lib, name), "/", TRUE))
+            path <- if (relpath) file.path(".", name)
+            else normalizePath(file.path(lib, name), "/", TRUE)
+            setNamespaceInfo(env, "path", path)
             setNamespaceInfo(env, "dynlibs", NULL)
             setNamespaceInfo(env, "S3methods", matrix(NA_character_, 0L, 3L))
             env$.__S3MethodsTable__. <-
--- r-base-3.3.3.orig/src/library/tools/R/admin.R
+++ r-base-3.3.3/src/library/tools/R/admin.R
@@ -785,7 +785,6 @@
 .install_package_Rd_objects <-
 function(dir, outDir, encoding = "unknown")
 {
-    dir <- file_path_as_absolute(dir)
     mandir <- file.path(dir, "man")
     manfiles <- if(!dir.exists(mandir)) character()
     else list_files_with_type(mandir, "docs")
--- r-base-3.3.3.orig/src/library/tools/R/makeLazyLoad.R
+++ r-base-3.3.3/src/library/tools/R/makeLazyLoad.R
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
     if (packageHasNamespace(package, dirname(pkgpath))) {
         if (! is.null(.getNamespace(as.name(package))))
             stop("namespace must not be already loaded")
-        ns <- suppressPackageStartupMessages(loadNamespace(package, lib.loc, keep.source, partial = TRUE))
+        ns <- suppressPackageStartupMessages(loadNamespace(package, lib.loc, keep.source, partial = TRUE, relpath = TRUE))
         makeLazyLoadDB(ns, dbbase, compress = compress)
     }
     else
--- r-base-3.3.3.orig/src/library/tools/R/parseRd.R
+++ r-base-3.3.3/src/library/tools/R/parseRd.R
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@
     basename <- basename(srcfile$filename)
     srcfile$encoding <- encoding
     srcfile$Enc <- "UTF-8"
+    srcfile$wd <- "."
 
     if (encoding == "ASCII") {
         if (any(is.na(iconv(lines, "", "ASCII"))))
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