fix-build-determinism

name	fix-build-determinism
description	Use this when asked to fix a Bazel build reproducibility / determinism issue — a target whose outputs differ between builds (e.g. across machines, users, or checkout locations), typically because something bakes an absolute build path or a timestamp into an artifact.

Fix build determinism issues

A reproducible build produces byte-identical outputs regardless of where it runs (which directory it's checked out in, which output base, which user). The IC publishes reproducible artifacts, so any target that bakes a build-time absolute path, timestamp, or other environment detail into its output is a bug.

The usual culprits are externally-built dependencies — http_archives built with rules_foreign_cc (autotools/cmake) and Rust crates with build.rs — because they escape Bazel's normal path/timestamp scrubbing and can embed $PWD, an install --prefix, __DATE__/__TIME__, a build-script probe artifact, etc. into their outputs.

All commands run from the repository root (cd "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)").

The hunt script

Diagnosis is driven by the upstream hunt reproducibility script. It is not checked into this repo — get it from its gist, save it at the repo root as hunt, and chmod +x it. It builds a target twice, each time in a freshly cloned checkout under an output base nested at a different depth — so the absolute build path differs between the two runs the same way it would differ between two machines. It writes each build's --execution_log_json_file and diffs the actualOutputs (path + content digest) of every action. Any output whose digest differs between the two runs is a non-reproducible artifact. A clean run ends with builds 1 - 2: no diff ✓.

usage: ./hunt [--root ROOT] [--startup-options OPTS] [--build-options OPTS] [--runs N] TARGET

  --root ROOT            dir for the per-run checkouts, output bases and execlogs.
                         Default: a fresh `mktemp -d`.
  --startup-options OPTS extra bazel *startup* options, one space-separated string.
  --build-options OPTS   extra bazel *build* options, one space-separated string.
  --runs N               number of builds to compare (default: 2).
  TARGET                 label to build, e.g. //:mkfs.ext4

Always pass --build-options='--config=local'

Run with --build-options='--config=local', which builds without the internal remote cache — essential, because a cache hit would serve a previously-built (possibly non-reproducible) artifact and mask the very non-determinism you're hunting. See the build-without-dfinity-infra skill for what --config=local does. (--startup-options/--build-options are how you feed bazel any other flags the build needs.)

Running it

Run hunt inside the dev container so the build environment is the pinned one. See the run-in-dev-container skill for how to invoke container-run.sh (including on hosts without podman):

# quick pass/fail (artifacts land in an ephemeral in-container tempdir):
./ci/container/container-run.sh ./hunt --build-options='--config=local' //my:target

# to *diagnose* (step 3 needs the two builds' outputs to survive the container),
# point --root at a path inside the checkout (mounted at its host path) so the artifacts persist on the host:
./ci/container/container-run.sh ./hunt --root "$PWD/,hunt" --build-options='--config=local' //my:target

Gotchas:

• hunt does git clone of the repo, so your fix must be committed (to the current branch) for a hunt run to pick it up. Iterate: commit → hunt → repeat.
• With the default tempdir, the checkouts/output bases live in the container's /tmp and vanish when the container exits — fine for a verdict, but use --root inside the checkout when you need to inspect artifacts.
• Bazel marks its output trees read-only. To clean the hunt root between runs: chmod -R u+w <root> && rm -rf <root>.
• Point --root at a path on the same filesystem as the repo for faster (hardlinked) clones.

Procedure

1. Run hunt --build-options='--config=local' on the failing target and read the mismatch JSON it prints — a list of {path, digest} for outputs that differed.

2. Look at the first differing target/output. Non-determinism cascades: one non-reproducible artifact (a generated source, a static lib, a tool binary) makes everything that embeds it differ too. Fix the earliest / most upstream differing artifact first; re-running often makes the downstream diffs vanish. Map the output path back to the dependency that produces it (e.g. external/+_repo_rules+<name>/... → the http_archive named <name>; external/.../<crate>-<version>/... → a crate).

3. Pin down what differs. The execlog only gives digests. Pull the two actual artifacts from the persisted output bases ($ROOT/output-base-1/... vs $ROOT/output-base-2/... — use --root so these survive) and compare them directly:

   cmp "$A" "$B"                                                 # confirm they differ
   diff <(strings -a "$A"|sort -u) <(strings -a "$B"|sort -u)    # build paths / dates
   diff <(readelf -SW "$A") <(readelf -SW "$B")                  # for ELF: which section
   

   Typical findings: an embedded absolute build path (/.../sandbox/.../...), a __DATE__/__TIME__ string, a build-script probe artifact, or archive ordering. (Bazel's C toolchain already redacts __DATE__/__TIME__ and passes -no-canonical-prefixes, so it's almost always an embedded path.)

   From the offending string, settle on a one-artifact probe for the bad pattern — a command that's non-empty on a broken build and empty once fixed, so you can judge a single build without re-running the full hunt. Pick the most specific stable marker the leak leaves behind (the sandbox path component, the exec-root / output-base prefix, .build_tmpdir, a date, the stray probe filename), e.g.:

   strings -a "$A" | grep -n sandbox    # expect matches now; none once fixed
   

4. Read the dependency's source to find where that string comes from — a configure-substituted install path, a build.rs writing env!("OUT_DIR") or a canonicalize()d path into generated code, a hardcoded PREFIX/... constant, a stray probe file left in OUT_DIR, etc.

5. Check out the source locally and iterate against it. Get the dependency at the exact version (same urls/sha256 as in MODULE.bazel, or the crate source), then point Bazel at your local copy so you can edit and rebuild without re-uploading a patch each time:

   bazel build --config=local --override_repository=<repo_name>=/abs/path/to/src //my:target
   

   (Find <repo_name> with bazel query --output=build <target> or from the execlog path.) Edit, rebuild, and run the step-3 probe on the freshly-built artifact as a fast inner-loop check — when it comes back empty the embedded dependency is gone:

   strings -a bazel-bin/.../<artifact> | grep sandbox || echo clean
   

   This single-build probe is a quick check only; it does not replace the full reproducibility confirmation in step 8. Keep a pristine copy to diff against for the patch.

6. Report it upstream. A local patch is a workaround — the real fix belongs in the dependency, and an upstream fix lets us eventually drop the patch. File an issue on the dependency's tracker (for a crate or other GitHub project, https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/issues/new), including:

   • a short explanation of the bug and its impact, e.g. "build.rs writes the absolute $OUT_DIR path into the generated foo.rs, so the crate's rlib differs between builds at different filesystem locations, breaking reproducible/hermetic builds."
   • a minimal reproducible example if the maintainer will likely need one — the smallest snippet that emits the offending output, or simply "build at two different paths and diff the artifacts" (the step-3 probe doubles as the symptom).

   Keep the resulting issue/PR URL; reference it from the patch header below.

7. Capture the fix as a patch applied at fetch time (don't fork the dep):

   • http_archive dependency — add a patch (convention: third_party/<name>_<what>.patch) and reference it from the archive in MODULE.bazel:

     http_archive(
         name = "<name>",
         ...
         patches = ["//third_party:<name>_<what>.patch"],
         patch_strip = 1,
     )
     

   • Rust crate — add a patch under bazel/ and a crate annotation in bazel/rust.MODULE.bazel:

     crate.annotation(
         crate = "<crate-name>",
         patch_args = ["-p1"],
         patches = ["@@//bazel:<crate>.patch"],
     )
     

   The patch is a git diff (paths a/… b/…); leading # comment lines describing the fix — and linking the upstream ticket from step 6 — are fine and conventional here. Prefer the smallest patch that removes the environment dependency. If the offending artifact is something nothing downstream consumes (an extra tool the dependency builds/installs), it's also valid to just stop shipping it (e.g. trim it in a rules_foreign_cc postfix_script) rather than make it reproducible.

8. Re-run hunt to confirm builds 1 - 2: no diff ✓. If a new (further downstream) difference appears, repeat from step 2 — that's the cascade resolving one layer at a time. Verify the real consumers of the target still build.

Worked examples

Dependency	Kind	Cause	Fix	Commit
askama (bazel/askama.patch)	crate (derive macro)	Path::canonicalize() resolved the sandbox symlink to the repo's real path; the resulting relative path's ..-count depended on the sandbox path depth, so the rlib changed across output-base/nest depths.	Skip canonicalize() so both paths stay anchored to the sandbox.	0d9c593299 (#10167)
libssh2-sys (bazel/libssh2-sys.patch)	crate (build.rs)	build.rs generated a pkgconfig file containing absolute build paths.	Disable that generation.	737666659c (#3197)
e2fsprogs / mke2fs (third_party/e2fsprogs_no_external_config.patch)	http_archive (rules_foreign_cc)	configure's --prefix is the per-build $BUILD_TMPDIR, so the compiled-in mke2fs.conf path (ROOT_SYSCONFDIR) landed in the binary's .rodata.	Empty config_fn (use the built-in default profile) + trim the unused, also-non-reproducible extra tools from the install tree.	cf7fe5147b

The askama case is the canonical illustration of why hunt varies the nest depth: the bug only manifests when the build path's depth changes between runs.